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Born
Mark Twain is born Samuel Langhorne Clemens to John Marshall Clemens and Jane Lampton Clemens, one of six children -
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The Life of Mark Twain
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Apprentice River Pilot
Samuel Clemens begins a successful two-year apprenticeship to become a licensed river pilot. He learns the lingo of the trade, including "mark twain," a phrase that refers to the river depth at which a boat is safe to navigate. This would later become his pen name. -
Travels West
Twain travels to Nevada with his brother Orion, who had been named the secretary to the territorial governor. He tries his hand at mining and other schemes, without much success, before becoming a reporter for the Virginia City, Nevada's Daily Territorial Enterprise. This would later become the book entitled "Roughing It." -
Jim Smiley and his Jumping Frog
The short story "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog," later "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calavaras County," appears in the New York Saturday Press. This proved to be very popular and raised Twain's profile as a writer. -
The Innocents Abroad
A travel book, Twain humorously chronicles what he calls his "Great Pleasure Excursion" aboard the chartered vessel Quaker City trough England and the Holy Land with a group of Americans in 1867. It was an instant best-seller and instantly boosting Twain's popularity. -
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, published in 1876, is the story of a young boy growing up on the Mississippi in the fictional town of St. Petersburg. -
Twain Publishing Company
Twain founded his own publishing company, Charles L. Webster & Co. It was actually a very bad financial move on his part, the company's struggles would cause him great financial ruin After 10 years, in 1894 the company goes belly-up and Twain finds himself essentially bankrupt. -
The Year of Literary Greatness
1885 was the year Twain published his greatest fictional book, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and his greatest nonfictional book, a biography of President Ulysses S. Grant titled, The Civil War Memoirs. -
The Angelfish Club
Lonely and missing his family in his Connecticut home, which he named Stormfield, Twain formed a club of young girls called the Angelfish Club that met regularly at his house to play cards. These girls, aged 10-16, were his "surrogate grandchildren" as all his children had died without having any children. He would take them to concerts and play billards with them. All girls were given an anglefish pin to represent their memberships to the club. -
Death
Mark Twain dies of a heart attack. Twain predicted his death in relation to Halley's Comet saying, "I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It's coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be my greatest disappointment in life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet.The Almighty has said, no doubt, 'Now here are two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.'" He passed one day after the Comet's passing in 1910.
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