Mark Twain Biography

Mark Twain Mark Twain was the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, he was born in Florida, MO, on Nov. 30, 1835, and he died on Apr. 21, 1910.Through this pen name he achieved worldwide fame during his lifetime as an author, lecturer, satirist, and humorist. Since his death his literary stature has further increased, with such writers as Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner declaring his works particularly Huckleberry Finn major influence on 20th-century American fiction. Twain was …

…ever: "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg" (1898) and What Is Man? (1906) are particularly scathing examinations of human nature. Yet, these works also imply that proper understanding of human motivations can result in progress. Moreover, volumes in the Mark Twain Papers series Which Was the Dream?, and Other Symbolic Writings of the Later Years (1967), Mark Twain's Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts (1969), and Mark Twain's Fables of Man (1972) suggest that the period was not the wasteland described by some critics.