Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by his pen name Mark Twain, was born in Missouri in 1835 and raised in the Mississippi River town of Hannibal. He worked as a printer, newspaper reporter and riverboat pilot before developing a career as a writer and lecturer. His pen name came from a riverboat term for a depth of two fathoms. Experiences of river travel and frontier life shaped much of his fiction and journalism.

Twain became widely known through The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), which portrayed childhood and society along the Mississippi. His writing combined humour, regional speech and criticism of slavery, prejudice and social convention. He also published travel accounts, essays and political commentary, including criticism of imperialism. Although commercially successful as an author, he faced serious financial difficulties linked to publishing ventures and investments. He travelled internationally as a lecturer and continued writing into his later years. He died in Connecticut in 1910.