Mark Twain (November 30, 1835 - April 21, 1910) was originally born Samuel Langhorne Clemens. He was the sixth of seven children born to Jane (née Lampton) and John Marshall Clemens. When Twain was four years old his family moved to Hannibal, Missouri on the Mississippi River. Hannibal was the quintessential small-town America that provided Twain with a healthy, happy and adventurous childhood. Emphasizing the innocence and virtues of small-town life, Twain drew heavily from his boyhood experiences growing up in Hannibal when he wrote his most famous books, "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" and "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." Indeed, Hannibal, Missouri served as the model for the fictional town of St. Petersburg made famous in those two books. In his twenties Twain became a respected steamboat pilot safely navigating steamboats on the Mississippi River.

In later years, as his writing career began, he adopted the pen-name "Mark Twain" which was commonly heard on the river as the leadman's cry as he flung the lead into the river to determine the depth of the water. In "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" Twain combined his interest in technology with his irreverent mockery of European nobility. In that book, a nineteenth century Hartford factory supervisor awakens in the year 513 in the England of King Arthur. While poking fun at the not-so-elegant-or-noble English nobility, Twain contrasts the enormous technological, social, political and economic progress of the nineteenth century with the backwardness and ignorance of Medieval England. Of course, this contrast is made as only Twain could have - with much humor and sarcasm. Following the tragic death of his wife in 1904, Twain moved to New York City. Twain died in New York City on April 21, 1910. Mark Twain virtually invented the American humorist style of writing.

Moreover, Twain's love of the simple life as well as his irreverence for established institutions endeared him to American readers of his time - and ever since.