Mark Twain

Born: 30 November 1835 Florida, Missouri, U.S.

Died: 21 April 1910 Redding, Connecticut, U.S.

Biography: Mark Twain, the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens was an American author and humorist. He wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), the latter often called "the Great American Novel." While Twain’s major published works were his abovementioned classic novels, he also published many essays, sketches, stories, literary reviews, and travelogue pieces. Though Twain earned a great deal of money from his writings and lectures, he invested in ventures that lost a great deal of money. In the wake of these financial setbacks, he filed for protection from his creditors via bankruptcy and eventually overcame his financial troubles. Twain chose to pay all his pre-bankruptcy creditors in full, though he had no legal responsibility to do so. Twain was born shortly after a visit by Halley´s Comet and he predicted that he would "go out with it" too. He died the day following the comet´s return. He was praised as the "greatest American humorist of his age" and William Faulkner called Twain "the father of American literature."