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. 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 17,385,250 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

  • 17M

    Page Views (PV)

  • 80.08

    Historical Popularity Index (HPI)

  • 155

    Languages Editions (L)

  • 9.07

    Effective Languages (L*)

  • 6.63

    Coefficient of Variation (CV)

Notable Works

The Innocents Abroad
Description and travel, Travel, Voyages and travels
The Prince and the Pauper
Readers, Fiction, Poor
When young Edward VI of England and a poor boy who resembles him exchange places, each learns something about the other's very different station in life. Includes a brief biography of the author.
Life on the Mississippi
American Authors, Fiction, Historical Fiction
At once a romantic history of a mighty river, an autobiographical account of Twains early steamboat days, and a storehouse of humorous anecdotes and sketches, here is the raw material from which Mark Twain wrote his finest novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain, 1835-1910
The adventures and pranks of a mischievous boy growing up in a Mississippi River town in the early nineteenth century. **Winner of the 1967 Lewis Carroll Shelf Award**
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
literature, child witnesses, young men
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) by Mark Twain is one of the truly great American novels, beloved by children, adults, and literary critics alike. The book tells the story of “Huck” Finn (first introduced as Tom Sawyer’s sidekick in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer), his friend Jim, and their journey down the Mississippi River on a raft. Both are on the run, Huck from his drunk and abusive father, and Jim as a runaway slave. ate a ton of nothing and almost died a couple hundred times. As Huck and Jim drift down the river, they meet many colorful characters and have many great adventures. The true heart of the story, however, is the friendship between Huck and Jim. A constant theme throughout the book is Huck’s internal struggle between what he has been taught, that helping a runaway slave is a sin, and what he truly believes, that Jim is a good man and it couldn’t possibly be wrong to help him. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was unique at the time of its publication (1884) because it is narrated by Huck himself and is written in the numerous dialects common in the area and time in which the book is set. Although the book was originally intended as a sequel to the children’s book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, as Twain wrote Adventures of Huckleberry Finn it progressed into a more serious work. Twain’s views on slavery and other social issues of the time become clear through the words, thoughts, and actions of Huck Finn. The book has always been the subject of great controversy, and according to The American Library Association it was fifth on the list of most frequently challenged books in the 1990s. (Summary by Annie Coleman) ---------- Also contained in: - [4 Classic American Novels](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL14876179W) - [Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Related Readings](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL17901897W/Adventures_of_Huckleberry_Finn_and_Related_Readings) - [Adventures of Huckleberry Finn with Connections](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL18153531W/Adventures_of_Huckleberry_Finn_with_Connections) - [Adventures of Tom Sawyer / Adventures of Huckleberry Finn](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL53905W/Adventures_of_Tom_Sawyer_Adventures_of_Huckleberry_Finn) - [Adventures of Tom Sawyer / Adventures of Huckleberry Finn / Mark Twain's Sketches / Mark Twain's (burlesque) Autobiography / The Prince and the Pauper / A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court / Roughing It](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL413764W/) - [Adventures of Tom Sawyer / Adventures of Huckleberry Finn / The Prince and the Pauper](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL413129W/Adventures_of_Tom_Sawyer_Adventures_of_Huckleberry_Finn_The_Prince_and_the_Pauper) - [Classic Adventure](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL17906974W/Classic_Adventure) - [The Family Mark Twain](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL15139315W/The_Family_Mark_Twain) - [Four Complete Novels](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL54156W) - [Four Great American Novels](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL7440070W/Four_Great_American_Novels) - [Illustrated Works of Mark Twain](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19666444W/Illustrated_Works_of_Mark_Twain) - [The Mark Twain Reader](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL53969W/The_Mark_Twain_Reader) - [Mississippi Writings](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL15290035W/Mississippi_Writings) - [The Original Illustrated Mark Twain](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL53986W) - [The Portable Mark Twain](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL15290077W/The_Portable_Mark_Twain)

Among WRITERS

Among writers, Mark Twain ranks 54 out of 7,302Before 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.

Most Popular Writers in Wikipedia

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1835, Mark Twain ranks 1After 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 3Before 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 20,380Before 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).

Among WRITERS In United States

Among writers born in United States, Mark Twain ranks 5Before 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).