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Essay on The Importance of Mark Twain in American Literature

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The Importance of Mark Twain in American Literature

Mark Twain is important to American literature because of his novels and how they portray the American experience. Some of his best selling novels were Innocents Abroad, Life on the Mississippi, Huckleberry Finn, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. In these books, Mark Twain recalls his own adventures of steamboating on the Mississippi River. Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born on November 30, 1835 in a small village of Florida, Missouri. His parent's names were John Marshall Clemens and Jan Lampton Clemens, descendants of slaves in Virginia. They had been married in Kentucky and move to Tennessee and then Missouri. When Sam was four, his father, who was full of the …show more content…

During those ten years Sam also engaged in another skill. He was piloting steamboats on the Mississippi River. He might have remained a pilot had not the Civil War intruded (Encyclopedia Americana 192A).
"When the war closed the river and after two hectic weeks in the Confederate Army, he went to Nevada with his brother, an abolitionist whom President Lincoln had appointed secretary to the territorial governor. And so, while the Civil War raged in the East, Samuel Clemens found himself searching the Wet for silver, and, soon his father, dreaming of a fortune (American Writers 193). Since Samuel's career as a prospector and a minor was a failure, he went back solely on journalism as a profession. In 1862, he got a secured job with the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise. This demonstrated his ability as a reporter and a humorist. "A year later, in February 1863, he adopted the pseudonym "Mark Twain" a river phrase meaning "two fathoms deep" (Encyclopedia Americana 291A).
He started to use the pen name Mark Twain while he was on the Enterprise. Changing names during this time was common for writers. "When readers saw that name they looked for a unique perspective upon people and events, and usually a comic one. It signified an invented personality, a mask." He mostly signed humorous journalism and other personal writings by Mark Twain. For his political reporting, he signed himself Samuel L. Clemens. Samuel

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