Famously known by his pen-name Mark Twain, Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in Florida, Missouri, on November 30, 1835. His family moved to nearby Hannibal where he witnessed death at a young age. The city of Hannibal inspired many of Twain’s fictional locales such as “St. Petersburg” in both Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. River towns such as these in his novels contain an influx of drunkenness, poverty, death, and loneliness - all components of Twain’s difficult childhood.

He lost his father at an early age thus leading to his first job at the age of 12 as an apprentice printer at the Hannibal Courier. He became a licensed steamboat pilot in 1859 at the age of 23. As the Civil War began, people in Missouri split between supporting the Union or the Confederate States. Clemens joined the Confederate Army in June 1861 and later discontinued his enlistment as the volunteer unit disbanded. After this, he went to work as a reporter for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise where his writing career first began.

His first novel was published in 1869 called The Innocents Abroad which became an instant bestseller. The next year, he married 24-year-old Olivia (Livy) Langdon, the daughter of a rich New York coal merchant. Together, they had four children together with the first-born - and the only son - who died at the age of only 19 months due to diphtheria. Some of Mark Twain’s most famous works including The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer are still well-read novels today.