Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in Florida, Missouri, and later moved with his family to Hannibal, Missouri, where he grew up. Although he had a number of odd jobs early in his life, Clemens is best known as a writer who took the pen name of Mark Twain about five years after he published his first major work. Twain was a traveling journalist, humorist, writer, and lecturer whose most famous novels are The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. His childhood in Hannibal along the Mississippi River inspired colorful tales of adventures on the waterway. Twain traveled around the world and he dazzled audiences far and wide with lectures filled with the same humor and spirit found in his writings.

This information was provided courtesy of America's Story from Library of Congress.