Mark Twain

American · b. 1835

Mark Twain, the pen name of Samuel Clemens, was the great humorist and moral conscience of American letters, drawing on his boyhood on the Mississippi and years as a riverboat pilot. Hemingway called The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn the source of all modern American literature; Twain's wit, vernacular voice, and hatred of hypocrisy made him the country's first truly national author.