Mark Twain

American writer and humorist; public pen name of Samuel Clemens.

Mark Twain, born Samuel Clemens, worked in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century United States print and performance culture as a printer, river pilot, journalist, lecturer, novelist, and satirist. His writing used vernacular narration, travel, humor, social observation, and unreliable voices to examine race, empire, commerce, technology, childhood, and national self-deception.