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Samuel L. Clemens wrote under the pen name Mark Twain, known for his novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He was born on November 30, 1835, in Florida, Missouri. He was the sixth child of John and Jane Clemens. John Clemens sometimes finding it hard to feed his family, worked as a lawyer, storekeeper, land speculator, and a judge. He always dreamed of wealth but never achieved his goal. When his father died unexpectedly, his mother, Jane, became the head of the household. From age 4 to 17, Sam Clemens lived in Hannibal. He was exposed to much violence growing up like the time when he was 10 he watched a slave die after a white overseer struck him with a piece of iron. Sam stayed in schooling up until the age of 12, he found employment …show more content…
He loved his new career- he was very happy and excited. His service got cut short 1861, from the Civil War. Clemens joined the Confederate Army in June 1861 but he only got to serve for a few weeks because his volunteer unit disbanded. He suddenly wondered; what can I do next? What would bring me cash and excitement? Then it hit him. The great American West. In 1861 he was heading to Nevada and California and he was in need of a regular job. By the middle of 1862, he was broke as can be. Since he knew his way around a newspaper office, he decided to start as a news reporter for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise. Along the way he adopted the pen name Mark Twain. Twain became one of the best storytellers of the west. He stumbled across his next step of success in 1867, when he took a Mediterranean sea cruise for five months, writing humor for American newspapers, He was also hoping to get his first book out of the trip. By 1869, best seller The Innocents Abroad was published. hoping to improve his social status, being a westerner and all, he married 24-year old Olivia Langdon in February 1870. The couple later had four children and settled in

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