Colton TribbyMrs. RandallHonors English 9B-44 April 2014Behind the Pseudonym: Mark TwainTwain, humorist, moralist, entertainer, philosopher, and writer, invented a new perspective on fiction by writing stories such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. Twain was considered “The Lincoln of literature” (Williams 1). He was not always the beloved writer he is today, he was considered a rebel and spoke out against the police. Twain's career didn't take off until he moved to Hannibal, Missouri. It was there that he wrote some of his best works. Twain followed his own conscience instead of society's view of right and wrong. Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens on November 30, 1835. It wasn't until 1853 that he became Mark Twain. Twain's literary experience began when he became a printer's apprentice at the age of seventeen. It was later that Twain moved from Hannibal, Missouri to try different jobs. “It was only at the age of 37,” he once observed, “that he awoke to discover that he had become a man of letters.” (Augustyn 28) While working as a riverboat pilot, Twain, then called Clemens, heard the term “Mark Twain” meaning a safe depth of water to operate a riverboat. Clemens chose this term as a pseudonym. Twain first used his pen name while writing for The Enterprise newspaper as a Confederate soldier for two weeks before moving west. During this period Twain's reputation was not very good. Twain often argued and spoke out against the police. After a man he knew was arrested after a fight, Twain left the town of Toulumne Foothills for mining. There he found inspiration for his next story when he heard the story of The Jumping...... middle of paper ......illness, Twain left specific instructions for the release of some of his. He worked on his autobiography until a few months before his death and it was not published by the University of California Press until 2006. Some of his collections of speeches and essays were also not published until 2001. Twain believed that some of them. his works were so controversial that he requested that they not be published until the year 2406. Mark Twain created some of the most persistent images of the sense of place and character that readers identify as American. Twain's works are now considered classics. William Dean Howells said, "Lincoln and Clemens were equal to each other and like other men of letters; but Clemens was the unique, incomparable, the Lincoln of our literature." (Williams 18). Twain's perspective will never be forgotten. Its place in American literary culture is secure.