WRITER

Mark Twain

1835 - 1910

Photo of Mark Twain

Icon of person Mark Twain

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, and essayist. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced," with William Faulkner calling him "the father of American literature." Twain's novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), with the latter often called the "Great American Novel." He also wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) and Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894) and cowrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) with Charles Dudley Warner. Ernest Hemingway claimed that "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn." Twain was raised in Hannibal, Missouri, which later provided the setting for both Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Mark Twain has received more than 17,904,113 page views. His biography is available in 155 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 154 in 2019). Mark Twain is the 54th most popular writer (down from 46th in 2019), the 46th most popular biography from United States (down from 33rd in 2019) and the 5th most popular American Writer.

Mark Twain is most famous for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

Memorability Metrics

  • 18M

    Page Views (PV)

  • 83.26

    Historical Popularity Index (HPI)

  • 155

    Languages Editions (L)

  • 9.07

    Effective Languages (L*)

  • 6.63

    Coefficient of Variation (CV)

Among WRITERS

Among writers, Mark Twain ranks 54 out of 7,302. Before him are Aeschylus, Simone de Beauvoir, Octave Mirbeau, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sappho, and Thomas Mann. After him are Gabriel García Márquez, George Orwell, Astrid Lindgren, Oscar Wilde, Stefan Zweig, and Marcel Proust.

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1835, Mark Twain ranks 1. After him are Leopold II of Belgium, Empress Dowager Cixi, Pope Pius X, Camille Saint-Saëns, Cesare Lombroso, Adolf von Baeyer, Andrew Carnegie, César Cui, Samuel Butler, Giovanni Schiaparelli, and Henryk Wieniawski. Among people deceased in 1910, Mark Twain ranks 3. Before him are Leo Tolstoy, and Henry Dunant. After him are Florence Nightingale, Robert Koch, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, William James, Henri Rousseau, Edward VII, Nadar, Chulalongkorn, and O. Henry.

Others Born in 1835

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Others Deceased in 1910

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In United States

Among people born in United States, Mark Twain ranks 46 out of 20,380. Before him are Al Pacino (1940), Robert De Niro (1943), Janis Joplin (1943), Harry S. Truman (1884), F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896), and J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904). After him are Zodiac Killer (1940), Maria Callas (1923), Bernie Sanders (1941), Cher (1946), Clint Eastwood (1930), and Wallis Simpson (1896).

Others born in United States

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Among WRITERS In United States

Among writers born in United States, Mark Twain ranks 5. Before him are Edgar Allan Poe (1809), Ernest Hemingway (1899), H. P. Lovecraft (1890), and F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896). After him are Robert Frost (1874), Henry David Thoreau (1817), Jack London (1876), Toni Morrison (1931), Stephen King (1947), Dr. Seuss (1904), and William Faulkner (1897).

American born Writers

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