1.
Mark Twain’s real
name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens.
2.
In 1857 at age 22,
Clemens decided he wanted to be a steamboat pilot. He studied the Mississippi
River painstakingly for two years before receiving his license in 1859. He
continued to pilot steamboats until 1861, when the civil war broke out.
3.
The pseudonym Mark
Twain, meant “two fathoms deep” on the Mississippi, and was called out on the
steamboat to indicate the boat was in sufficiently deep water. Clemens first
used the name in a publication on February 3, 1863, in a piece he contributed
to the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise.
4.
Twain received a
Doctorate in Letters from Oxford University in 1907
5.
Twain was very
interested in parapsychology; he foresaw his brother Henry’s death in a vivid
and detailed dream (which came to pass) and even predicted the timing of his
own death with some accuracy.
1. Twain grew up in Missouri, a slave state.
However, when the Civil War broke out, Missouri didn’t join the Confederacy, so
Twain and some friends formed a militia to fight on the Confederate side. This
lasted until the first battle. When a man was killed, Twain deserted.
2. Twain was a successful lecturer, generating
money and fame via speaking tours throughout the United States and Europe.
3. When Twain disliked you, you knew it. His essay
“Fennimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses” does an entertainingly malicious job of
taking apart the author of Last of the Mohicans.
4. Twain made lots of money, but he lost most of
it. He was as bad at investing as he was good at writing, and he eventually had
to declare bankruptcy.
5. Ernest Hemingway once said, “All modern American
literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.”
