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Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. He wrote ''The Adventures of Tom Sawyer'' (1876) and its sequel, ''Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'' (1885), the latter often called "The Great American Novel". Twain grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, which provided the setting for ''Huckleberry Finn'' and ''Tom Sawyer''. After an apprenticeship with a printer, he worked as a typesetter and contributed articles to the newspaper of his older brother, Orion Clemens. He later became a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River before heading west to join Orion in Nevada. He referred humorously to his singular lack of success at mining, turning to journalism for the Virginia City ''Territorial Enterprise''.〔Thomson, David, In Nevada: The Land, The People, God, and Chance, New York: Vintage Books, 2000. ISBN 0-679-77758-X p. 35〕 In 1865, his humorous story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", was published, based on a story he heard at Angels Hotel in Angels Camp, California, where he had spent some time as a miner. The short story brought international attention, and was even translated into classic Greek.〔(Mark Twain, ''The Jumping Frog: In English, Then in French, and Then Clawed Back into a Civilized Language Once More by Patient, Unremunerated Toil'', illustrated by F. Strothman, New York and London, Harper & Brothers, Publishers, MCMIII, pp. 64–66 ).〕 His wit and satire, in prose and in speech, earned praise from critics and peers, and he was a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists, and European royalty. Though Twain earned a great deal of money from his writings and lectures, he invested in ventures that lost a great deal of money, notably the Paige Compositor, a mechanical typesetter, which failed because of its complexity and imprecision. In the wake of these financial setbacks, he filed for protection from his creditors via bankruptcy, and with the help of Henry Huttleston Rogers eventually overcame his financial troubles. Twain chose to pay all his pre-bankruptcy creditors in full, though he had no legal responsibility to do so. Twain was born shortly after a visit by Halley's Comet, and he predicted that he would "go out with it", too. He died the day after the comet returned. He was lauded as the "greatest American humorist of his age",〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Obituary (New York Times) )〕 and William Faulkner called Twain "the father of American literature". ==Early life== Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in Florida, Missouri, on November 30, 1835. He was the son of Jane (née Lampton; 1803–1890), a native of Kentucky, and John Marshall Clemens (1798–1847), a Virginian. His parents met when his father moved to Missouri and were married in 1823.〔("Inventing Mark Twain" ). 1997. ''New York Times''.〕〔. Cited in (【引用サイトリンク】Excerpt: ''The Singular Mark Twain'' )〕 Twain was the sixth of seven children, but only three of his siblings survived childhood: Orion (1825–1897); Henry (1838–1858); and Pamela (1827–1904). His sister Margaret (1833–1839) died when he was three, and his brother Benjamin (1832–1842) died three years later. Another brother, Pleasant (1828–1829), died at six months.〔(【引用サイトリンク】format=PDF )〕 Twain was born two weeks after the closest approach to Earth of Halley's Comet. His ancestors were of Scots-Irish, English, and Cornish extraction.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.irishcentral.com/roots/mark-twains-ancestor-was-witchfinder-general-during-belfast-witchcraft-trial-230973591-237786421.html )〕 When he was four, Twain's family moved to Hannibal, Missouri,〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Mark Twain, American Author and Humorist )〕 a port town on the Mississippi River that inspired the fictional town of St. Petersburg in ''The Adventures of Tom Sawyer'' and ''Adventures of Huckleberry Finn''. Slavery, then legal in Missouri, was a theme Twain would explore in these writings. In 1847, when Twain was 11, his father, by then an attorney and judge, died of pneumonia.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=John Marshall Clemens )〕 The next year Twain left school after the fifth grade〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Welcome to the Mark Twain House & Museum - Biography of Mark Twain )〕 to become a printer's apprentice. In 1851, he began working as a typesetter and contributor of articles and humorous sketches for the ''Hannibal Journal'', a newspaper Orion owned. When he was 18, he left Hannibal and worked as a printer in New York City, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Cincinnati. He joined the newly formed International Typographical Union, the printers union, and educated himself in public libraries in the evenings, finding wider information than at a conventional school.〔Philip S. Foner, ''Mark Twain: Social Critic'' (New York: International Publishers, 1958), p. 13, cited in Helen Scott's "The Mark Twain they didn't teach us about in school" (2000) in the ''International Socialist Review'' 10, Winter 2000, pp. 61–65, at ()〕 Twain describes in ''Life on the Mississippi'' how, when he was a boy, "there was but one permanent ambition" among his comrades: to be a steamboatman. "Pilot was the grandest position of all. The pilot, even in those days of trivial wages, had a princely salary – from a hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty dollars a month, and no board to pay." As Twain described it, the pilot's prestige exceeded that of the captain. The pilot had to "get up a warm personal acquaintanceship with every old snag and one-limbed cottonwood and every obscure wood pile that ornaments the banks of this river for twelve hundred miles; and more than that, must ... actually know where these things are in the dark..." Steamboat pilot Horace E. Bixby took on Twain as a "cub" pilot to teach him the river between New Orleans and St. Louis for $500, payable out of Twain's first wages after graduating. Twain studied the Mississippi, learning its landmarks, how to navigate its currents effectively, and how to "read the river" and its constantly shifting channels, reefs, submerged snags and rocks that would "tear the life out of the strongest vessel that ever floated".〔Clemens, Samuel L. ''Life on the Mississippi'', pp. 32, 37, 45, 57, 78, Harper & Brothers, New York and London, 1917.〕 It was more than two years before he received his pilot's license. Piloting gave him his pen name, Mark Twain, from "mark twain", the leadsman's cry for a measured river depth of two fathoms (12 feet), which was safe water for a steamboat. While training, Samuel convinced his younger brother Henry to work with him. Henry was killed on June 21, 1858, when the steamboat he was working on, the ''Pennsylvania'', exploded. Twain had foreseen this death in a dream a month earlier, which inspired his interest in parapsychology; he was an early member of the Society for Psychical Research.〔For a further account of Twain's involvement with parapsychology, see Blum, Deborah, ''Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death'' (Penguin Press, 2006).〕 Twain was guilt-stricken and held himself responsible for the rest of his life. Twain continued to work on the river and was a river pilot until the American Civil War broke out in 1861, and traffic along the Mississippi was curtailed. At the start of hostilities, Twain enlisted briefly in a Confederate local unit. Twain later wrote a sketch, "The Private History of a Campaign That Failed", that told how he and his friends had been Confederate volunteers for two weeks before disbanding. He then left for Nevada to work for Orion, who was Secretary of the Nevada Territory. Twain describes the episode in his book, ''Roughing It''.〔Clemens, Samuel L. ''Roughing It'', p. 19, American Publishing Company, Hartford, CT, 1872. ISBN 0-87052-707-X.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Mark Twain」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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