Born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, on November 30, 1835, in Florida, Missouri. He began his professional career as a steamboat captain on the Mississippi River, piloting boats for two years, until the Civil War halted steamboat traffic. In 1864, Twain moved to San Francisco to work as a reporter. There, he wrote the story that first made him famous: The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. He subsequently traveled the world, and published his accounts in the popular The Innocents Abroad (1869).

In 1870, Twain married Olivia Langdon. They settled in Hartford, Connecticut, where he continued to write travel accounts and lecture. Over the next fifteen years he established his reputation as a novelist with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Life on the Mississippi (1883), and his masterpiece The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885). In 1903, Twain and his family moved to Italy, where his wife died. After her death, his work, while still humorous, grew distinctly darker. He died in April 1910.