Mark Twain

Mark Twain was the pen name of Samuel Clemens, a Missouri printer’s apprentice, Mississippi riverboat pilot, Nevada silver miner and San Francisco journalist who became the most famous American of his age, lecturing in a white suit on every continent. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a boy and a runaway slave on a raft, is the book Hemingway said all American literature comes from. He lost a fortune on a typesetting machine, lost a wife and two daughters, and turned dark; The Mysterious Stranger, left unfinished in three drafts, is the bitter last word that his executor patched together after his death.