Samuel Langhorne Clemens ("Mark Twain") was an influential American Author in the 18th century. He is known far and wide for his interesting books. He was born in Florida, Mo. to his parents John Marshall and Jan (Lampton) Clemens (Kunitz and Haycraft 159). Samuel is a good author that had written many books during his lifetime.
Twain's beginning of his writing life was a bumpy road to his eventual success. His occupations were novelist, essayist, and travel writer (159). He was hired earlier on by Virginia City, Nev.'s, "Enterprise" and San Francisco's "Morning Call" in 1864. Twain was motivated by Bret Harte, which was the 1st purely literary figure he had ever known. All of these events led up to the crucial point in his career where he wrote "Innocents Abroad", and it established him as a solid writer (Kunitz and Haycraft 159).
In between Mark's writing career, he also had a personal life which he valued. The first and last of his marriages in 1870 was to Olivia Langdon. There was a lot of family death in which his father, wife, son, and two of his daughters died (Kunitz and Haycraft 159-160). He had built a house with his wife in Hartford, Conn. which suggested a Mississippi River steamboat and was one of the most spectacular houses of that day (Gerber 431). Twain had made a good friendship with Nikola Tesla (http://artzia.com/History/Biography/Twain 1). Many of the places he moved to included Hannibal, as far south as New York and Philadelphia, Keokuk, Iowa, Carson City, Virginia City, Nev., San Francisco, Hartford, and a villa in Florence (Kunitz and Haycraft 159-160).
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There is also some interesting information about Twain that few people might have known. He had a secret that he lived in glory in public, but in private he lived in tragedy (Kunitz and Haycraft 160). Mark had been fascinated in science and scientific inquiry also (http://artzia.com/History/Biography/Twain 1), and he had mastered colloquial speech (http://artzia.