Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens on November 30, 1835, the sixth of seven kids. He was born in Florida, Missouri, but his family moved to Hannibal, Missouri when he was four years old. Hannibal would later become his inspiration for the fictional town of St. Petersburg in which “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” were set.

John Marshall Clemens, Twain’s father, died when he was only eleven years old. He worked as a printer and typesetter and wrote articles for the Hannibal newspaper owned by his brother. He left home at the age of eighteen and worked as a printer, educating himself by visiting libraries in the evenings. During this time he lived in New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Cincinnati. After four years, he returned to Missouri.

Twain became inspired to be a steamboat pilot after going on a steamboat trip from Missouri to New Orleans. He studied for two years to obtain his license. He also got his brother into this occupation, and he was tragically killed in an accident. Twain had experienced a dream one month earlier in which he saw his brother’s death, and he became interested in parapsychology at that time.

He traveled in the western United States and in Europe and the Middle East writing for a San Francisco newspaper. He met Olivia Langdon, the sister of a friend, in 1968 and they were married in 1870. Olivia was from a wealthy, yet liberal family, and he met many progressive thinkers through them. The two had one son, Langdon, and three daughters, Suzy, Clara, and Jean. Sadly, their son died of diphtheria when he was only 19 months old.

Twain was known for his stance against racism and for supporting the abolition of slavery, but he was oddly prejudiced against Native Americans. He was also critical of organized religion, and very much in favor of labor unions. He also belonged to the Freemasons.

He made a large amount of money in his career, but he often made bad investments, which resulted in serious financial problems. In 1893, he had to be saved by his friend, finance expert Henry H. Rogers, who convinced him to file for bankruptcy. Rogers then took complete control of Twain’s money and brought him out of the financial crisis.

Although he is best known for “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” Twain wrote many other novels, political satires, non-fiction essays, and non-fiction accounts of his travels. He was a great lecturer and humorist in addition to being a talented author.

Twain had been born two weeks after the 1835 appearance of Halley’s Comet, and he always said, “I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don’t go out with Halley’s Comet.” His prediction came true, and the man whom William Faulkner called “the father of American literature” died one day after the comet’s closest approach to the Earth in 1910.