High School English · Mark Twain · Unit 6
Twain’s Life and Legacy
He arrived with Halley’s Comet and left with it, and in between he changed the way Americans write.
The first five units looked at the books. This one looks at the man who wrote them, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, and at what his work left behind. Many of the events below show up, rearranged, in the novels and travel books you have read.
On this page: a timeline of his life, his money troubles and family losses, his influence on later writers, three famous quotes he never said, a timeline game, and a 15-question quiz that reviews all six units.
A Life in Brief
- 1835Born on November 30 in Florida, Missouri, the sixth of seven children of John Marshall Clemens and Jane Lampton Clemens. Halley’s Comet was in the sky that year.
- 1839The family moves to Hannibal, a river town on the Mississippi. It becomes St. Petersburg in Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.
- 1847–1850sHis father dies in 1847. Sam leaves school after the fifth grade to work as a printer’s apprentice, then sets type for his older brother Orion’s newspaper and for printers in other cities.
- 1857–1861He trains as a cub pilot under Horace Bixby, studies the river for more than two years, and earns his pilot’s license. In 1858 his younger brother Henry dies after a steamboat explosion, and Sam blames himself for the rest of his life. The Civil War ends river traffic in 1861. See Unit 4 for Life on the Mississippi.
- 1861–1866He goes west with Orion, who has become secretary of Nevada Territory. Mining fails, so he turns to newspapers: the Territorial Enterprise in Virginia City, then San Francisco. These years become Roughing It (1872).
- 1863On February 3 he signs a piece in the Territorial Enterprise “Mark Twain” for the first time. The name is the leadsman’s call for two fathoms, twelve feet of water: safe for a steamboat.
- 1865“The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” brings him his first wide fame (Unit 3).
- 1867–1869He sails on the Quaker City to Europe and the Holy Land and writes The Innocents Abroad (1869), a best seller. On board he meets Charles Langdon, whose sister Olivia he soon begins to court. She turns down his first proposal.
- 1870He marries Olivia (Livy) Langdon in Elmira, New York, in February.
- 1874–1891The family lives in the house they had built in Hartford, Connecticut. Here he writes his best-known books, including Tom Sawyer (1876) and Huckleberry Finn. The house is now the Mark Twain House and Museum.
- 1891Bad investments push the family to leave the Hartford house and move to Europe.
- 1894–1897His publishing firm fails, and the lecture tour and book that pay off his debts follow (see the next section).
- 1896–1909He loses his daughter Susy (1896), his wife Livy (1904) and his daughter Jean (1909).
- 1907Oxford University gives him an honorary Doctor of Letters degree.
- 1910He dies of a heart attack on April 21 at Stormfield, his house in Redding, Connecticut, one day after the comet’s closest approach to the sun. He is buried in Elmira, New York.
Debt, Loss and Late Honors
The typesetting machine
Between 1880 and 1894 Twain put about $300,000 into the Paige Compositor, a typesetting machine that was supposed to make him rich. It was complicated and broke down too often. Faster, simpler machines took the market, and his money was gone.
Bankruptcy, then every cent repaid
His publishing firm, Charles L. Webster & Company, failed in 1894. The oil executive Henry H. Rogers helped him sort out his affairs. The law did not require him to repay his creditors in full, but he did anyway.
Around the world
To earn the money he set out in 1895 on a lecture tour around the world, through Fiji, Australia, New Zealand, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), India, Mauritius and South Africa. He described the trip in Following the Equator (1897).
Three losses
In 1896, while he was still abroad, his daughter Susy died of spinal meningitis at 24 in Hartford. Livy died in Florence, Italy, on June 5, 1904. His youngest daughter, Jean, who had epilepsy, died at Stormfield on December 24, 1909. Of his four children, only Clara outlived him.
Honors
Yale gave him an honorary doctorate in 1901 and the University of Missouri in 1902. Oxford followed in 1907. In 1909 Thomas Edison’s company filmed him at Stormfield; it is the only known film of him.
The comet
Halley’s Comet returns about every 76 years. In 1909, his biographer Albert Bigelow Paine reports, Twain said:
“I came in with Halley’s comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it.”
He died the following April, while the comet was in the sky.
His Legacy
Each earlier unit covers one part of this in depth. Here is the short version.
A book told in a boy’s voice
Before Twain, serious American novels were mostly written in polished literary English. Huckleberry Finn is told entirely by an uneducated boy, in the way people in the Mississippi Valley actually spoke. Later writers took that as permission to write in their own characters’ speech. In Green Hills of Africa (1935) Ernest Hemingway put it this way:
“All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.”
A few lines later he adds, “There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.” In the same passage he tells readers to stop at the point where Jim is taken from the boys, because he thought the ending that follows was a cheat. Readers still argue about that ending (Unit 2). William Faulkner called Twain “the father of American literature.”
Humor with a target
Twain showed that a humorist could be taken seriously. The tall tales of Unit 3, the deadpan of his travel books in Unit 4 and the angry satire of Unit 5 all use laughter to make a point about greed, vanity, slavery or war.
Since 1998 the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., has given the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor to people who have “had an impact on American society in ways similar to” Twain. The first winner was Richard Pryor. The prize was not given in 2020 or 2021.
Writers who answered back
- Ralph Ellison, in the essay “Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke” (Partisan Review, 1958), argued that Jim’s full humanity shows from behind the minstrel mask Twain gives him.
- Toni Morrison called her 1996 introduction to the Oxford Mark Twain edition of the novel “This Amazing, Troubling Book.” Her title names both sides of the debate.
- Percival Everett’s novel James (2024) retells the story with Jim as narrator. It won the National Book Award for Fiction and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Quotes Twain Never Said
Twain is one of the most quoted Americans, and so a magnet for lines he never wrote. Before you use a Twain quote in an essay, find it in a book or letter he actually wrote. The researcher Garson O’Toole at Quote Investigator traced these three.
✗ Not Twain
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.”
Where it really comes from: the earliest known appearance is H. Jackson Brown Jr.’s 1990 book P.S. I Love You, where it is credited to his mother. No one has found it in Twain’s writing. (Quote Investigator)
✗ Not Twain
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
Where it really comes from: no evidence links it to Twain. The humorist Josh Billings printed a related saying in 1874, but who first said this version is unknown. The film The Big Short (2015) opens with it credited to Twain. (Quote Investigator)
✗ Not Twain
“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”
Where it really comes from: no one knows. The earliest strong match is a 1970 sermon by the minister Ernest T. Campbell, who introduced it with “It has been said,” so it was already going around. The Twain credit came later, in posts on Twitter. (Quote Investigator)
Timeline Game
Put His Life in Order
Nine events from Twain’s life. For each one, choose the period it belongs to: before 1861, 1861 to 1890, or 1891 to 1910. A right pick is marked ✓ Right; a wrong pick is marked ✗ Try again, and you can choose again. Your score counts first tries.
Review Quiz
All Six Units: Review Quiz
Fifteen questions, at least two from each unit. Choose one answer per question. Your pick is marked ✓ if it is right or ✗ if it is not, the right answer is marked ✓, and a short explanation follows. Your score appears at the end.
Looking Back
For class or for your own journal. Use evidence from at least two units.
- Pick one event from the timeline and trace it into a book. What did Twain keep, and what did he change?
- Twain lost a fortune and his favorite daughter in the 1890s. Do you see that in the later satire of Unit 5? Point to specific passages.
- Hemingway said American writing “comes from” Huckleberry Finn. Name a book, song or film you know that uses a character’s own everyday voice. What does that voice let it do?
- Ellison, Morrison and Everett all return to Jim. Why do you think writers keep answering this one book?
- Why do people attach their favorite sayings to Mark Twain? What does that say about his reputation?
- Which unit changed your view of Twain the most, and why?
Sources and Credits
- Albert Bigelow Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography (1912), Project Gutenberg eBook #2988 (gutenberg.org/ebooks/2988), for the 1839 move to Hannibal and the Halley’s Comet remark.
- Wikipedia, “Mark Twain” (birth, family, apprenticeship, piloting, the West, the first use of the pen name on February 3, 1863, marriage, the Paige Compositor, bankruptcy and repayment, the world tour, honorary degrees, the Edison film, death, Faulkner’s “father of American literature” remark), “Mark Twain House” (1874–1891), “Susy Clemens,” “Olivia Langdon Clemens,” “Jean Clemens,” “Following the Equator,” “Mark Twain Prize for American Humor,” “James (novel)” and “Green Hills of Africa.”
- Ernest Hemingway, Green Hills of Africa (Scribner’s, 1935), chapter 1. The wording was checked against two published transcriptions, as the full text is not public domain in the United States.
- Ralph Ellison, “Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke,” Partisan Review (Spring 1958); Toni Morrison, “This Amazing, Troubling Book,” introduction to Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Oxford Mark Twain (1996).
- Garson O’Toole, Quote Investigator: “Twenty Years from Now You Will Be More Disappointed,” “It Ain’t What You Don’t Know That Gets You Into Trouble” and “The Two Most Important Days in Your Life.”
- Quiz questions about Units 1–5 draw on those units, whose sources are listed on each unit page. Biographical summaries are our own.
- Art: the comet illustration and the preview image are original artwork made for Jugami.