Biography of Mark TwainMark Twain was born on November 30, 1835 as Samuel Langhorne Clemens as "the sixth living child of John and Jane Clemens" in the town of Florida. , Monroe County, Missouri (Cox 7). There, his father operated a general store and tried unsuccessfully to create an invention that would bring him wealth. As a result, soon after, the store went bankrupt and John Clemens moved the family to Hannibal, Missouri, which Mark Twain would make famous. Little Sam, as he was called in his youth, was never particularly close to his family, with the exception of his mother who he greatly admired and looked up to. At this time, Twain had five siblings, his three brothers “Orion, Benjamin, and Henry, and his [two] sisters, Pamela and Mary” (Cox 9). A predominant influence in his young life was slavery as his father "owned or hired slaves" whenever money was available (Cox 9). He had great sympathy for slaves and had difficulty sleeping one night as he listened to “the groans of a runaway slave captured and tied up in a nearby cabin (Cox 13). Despite his strong feelings and his later condemnation of slavery, when Twain was young he was unaware that there was a problem with slavery because no one spoke of it as anything other than righteous, holy, and proper. Growing up, he was still unaware of the immorality of slavery, but he also knew, even without knowing it, that it was wrong. The influences that slavery had on him were later made very clear in one of his most popular novels, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Twain's young life was quite simple. His only formal education was a private school in Hannibal, for which he quite quickly grew to have great disdain. Then he spent his summers on his uncle's farm, where... middle of paper ...... marrying Olivia and having three daughters, he began writing his most memorable books and stories to date . He wrote literary masterpieces that shook and forever changed the face of American literature. Due to all his difficulties and his great influence in the literary field, Mark Twain was and will forever be one of the greatest writers to have ever lived and to have left his mark on the face of literature as we know it. Works Cited Cox, Clinton. “Mark Twain.” New York: Scholastic Inc., 1995. Marshall, Donald G. “American Literature.” Advanced World Book. World Book, 2013. Web. November 18, 2013. Marshall, Donald G. “Twain, Mark.” Advanced World Book. World Book, 2013. Web. November 17, 2013.Twain, Mark. “The Prince and the Pauper”. New York: Penguin Books USA Inc., 1881. “Twain, Mark, 1835-1910.” ProQuest Biographies. 2006: np SIRS Renaissance. Internet. November 18 2013.