Mark Twain

Samuel Clemens, a.k.a. Mark Twain, grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, which would later provide the setting for his books The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He started contributing humorous sketches and articles to the newspaper his brother owned, the Hannibal Journal, at age 12. At 18, Twain moved to New York, working as a printer. He later became a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River an also spent some time in the American West as a miner. While Twain’s major published works were his abovementioned classic novels, he also published many essays, sketches, stories, literary reviews, and travelogue pieces. Later in life, Twain was awarded honorary degrees from Yale, Oxford, and the University of Missouri.