Born: 30 November 1835 · Died: 21 April 1910 · Age at death: 74
How old was Mark Twain when he died?
Mark Twain died aged 74. He was born on 30 November 1835 and died on 21 April 1910.
American author and humorist who wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Did you know?He was born during a visit from Halley’s Comet and died when it returned seventy-four years later.
Quick facts
Date of birth30 November 1835
Date of death21 April 1910
Age at death74
Cause of deathMyocardial infarction
NationalityAmerican
BirthplaceFlorida, Missouri, United States
Occupationjournalist, novelist, autobiographer
Editor's Take:
Mark Twain turned the everyday speech of ordinary Americans into great literature. Before becoming a writer he worked as a printer, a Mississippi riverboat pilot and a gold prospector, experiences that filled his books with real characters and places. His pen name itself comes from a riverboat call meaning water two fathoms deep. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, with its friendship between a runaway boy and an escaped enslaved man, tackled race in ways that still provoke debate. Ernest Hemingway later claimed that all modern American literature comes from that single book.
Key Milestones
1863: First signs his work Mark Twain
1865: The Celebrated Jumping Frog makes his name
1869: Publishes The Innocents Abroad
1876: Publishes The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
1884: Publishes Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
1895: Begins a world lecture tour to pay his debts
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, and essayist. He has been praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced", with William Faulkner calling him "the father of American literature".
