Mark Twain was born with the name Samuel Clemens in November 1835 in Florida, Missouri. He was born and raised in the South by a family that had lived in the South for generations. When Twain was four years old, his family moved to Hannibal, a small town in Missouri. There, Twain was exposed to the culture and racial dynamics, including slavery, that influenced some of his major works like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Twain was a rowdy, curious boy, like his famous character Tom Sawyer.
Twain’s entry into publishing began shortly after his father died, when he was 12, and he had to quit school and get a job. He worked as an apprentice in a printer’...