Mark Twain

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was born in Missouri in 1835.Twain left school after the fifth grade to become a printer’s apprentice, and in 1851 began working as a typesetter and contributing humorous stories to local newspapers. He then went on to become a steamboat pilot, which gave him his pen name - “mark twain” was the cry signifying a safe depth of river water. He travelled extensively in the American West, later moving to San Francisco, before settling in Manhattan for his later years.He published The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which drew heavily on his own childhood in Missouri, in 1876. Its sequel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, was published in 1884, and is frequently listed among the Great American Novels. Both novels are available to purchase as physical audiobooks on the Voxblock website.