What Is Man?

Mark Twain (1835-1910) was baptized as Samuel Langhorne Clemens, but that name would forever remain in the shadow of his pseudonym. The son of a severe lawyer, it was his mother who awakened his sense of humour. If there is no doubt that his work is varied, it will be more curious to note that his professional life was even more so. Twain began working as a printer's apprentice in 1848, and a few years later he was contributing articles and humorous stories to a brother's newspaper. As an older man, on a trip through the Mississippi aboard a steamboat, he was fascinated by the pilot's work, and dedicated two years of his life to learning this craft. One of the many trips of his life took him, some time later, to a silver mine in Nevada, where he tried to be a miner, without much success. On the other hand, he found work in the local newspaper. It was here that, from the pen of Samuel Clemens, then 27 years old, Mark Twain was born. He is the author of The Voyage of the Innocents (Tinta-da-china, 2010) and two works with which he is invariably associated: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884).