The American writer’s real name was Samuel L. Clemens. For a time he worked on a Mississippi steamboat as a river pilot. The boatmen shouted ‘mark twain’ (second mark) as they measured the shallow water to a depth of two fathoms (3.6m or 12ft).
Best known of his humorous books are The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry finn.
After a brief two weeks as a Confederate enlistee, he joined his brother Orion in Nevada Territory where Orion served as secretary to the governor. He tried mining but failed and instead took up as a journalist for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise. This is when he began to use the pen name of Mark Twain. The original user of the pseudonym died in 1869.
In Life on the Mississippi, Mark Twain says: “I was a fresh new journalist, and needed a nom de guerre; so I confiscated the ancient mariner’s discarded one, and have done my best to make it remain what it was in his hands—a sign and symbol and warrant that whatever is found in its company may be gambled on as being the petrified truth; how I have succeeded, it would not be modest in me to say.”
Further, in his autobiography, Clemens noted that he wrote several satires of the original pilot’s postings that were published and caused embarrassment. As a result, Isaiah Sellers stopped publishing his reports. Clemens was penitent for this later in life.
Credit : Thought Co.
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