Google Doodle Celebrates Mark Twain`s Birthday

Google celebrates another occasion with a doodle today. It is Mark Twain’s 176th birthday. He was afamous American author. The doodle shows the visuals from his notable novel, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, where Tom Sawyer is painting the fence.

Mark Twain is known for his two famous novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885). Also known as the father of American literature, Twain was a great public speaker and writer. He started his career with light and humorous verse and gradually, evolved into hypocrisies and vanities. He combined humor with sturdy narrative and social criticism in Huckleberry Finn. A lot of his time was devoted to create a unique American literature. He has written many novels, articles, humorous verse and other pieces of writings with various pen names.

Born on November 30, 1835 as Samuel Langhorne Clemens in Florida, USA, he was popularly known as Mark Twain as his pen name. Twain spent his childhood in Hannibal, Missouri near the Mississippi river. His novels, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, were inspired from the background and culture of this town. In 1847, he started working with a printer at the age of 11.

In 1851, he got a job of a typesetter. His brother, Orion, owned a newspaper called Hannibal Journal. He started writing articles for the newspaper and contributed humorous sketches. Later on,Twain also worked as a steamboat pilot.

Twain had extensively traveled across the world. He traveled across the Rocky Mountains and Great Plains and visited the Salt Lake City. This made him write some best pieces like Roughing It and The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. He started working as a miner in Nevada but did not succeed. In 1864, he came to California and continued working as a journalist. In 1865, The Saturday Press published his work “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” which was appreciated nationally. In 1867, he traveled to Middle East and Europe and wrote many travel letters. These letters were later compiled into ‘The Innocents Abroad’. In 1868, Yale University offered him a honorary membership.

Twain married Olivia in 1870. He worked as a writer and editor in Buffalo Express at New York. The couple had three daughters and a son. But their son died when he was 19 months old. He and his family, later on, shifted to Connecticut where he wrote many classic novels such as Life on the Mississippi, Prince and the Pauper, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.

Twain had a deep interest in parapsychology, science and technology. He worked on various inventions especially the Paige typesetting machine. Though he made a lot of money from his writing but spent a big chunk through investments in various inventions. In 1893, he met Henry Rogers who became his close friend. He helped Twain in recovering from his financial loss.

Twain went through a period of depression after the death of his wife, two daughters and his friend, Henry Rogers. On April 21, 1910, he died of heart attack.