Mark Twain, aka Samuel Clemens, was born in the town of Florida, Missouri, in 1835.

Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in a small town in Missouri. While he did some writing in his early adult life, his real passion was for the Mississippi River. He apprenticed on a steamboat and became a licensed riverboat captain at the age of 23. The Civil War stopped his sailing career only two years later, and after a short service in the Confederate army, Clemens returned to writing. Working as a reporter first for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise and later for papers in San Francisco, Hawaii and New York, Twain adopted his pseudonym, a river term noting where the water level becomes two fathoms—the minimum safe navigation depth. Twain began his fiction-writing career first through fictional comic travel letters, and became one of literature's best-known and best-loved authors with his fictional accounts of the life and times of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Twain died on April 21st, 1910.

ARTSEDGE
The lesson Twain: Icon and Iconoclast (9-12), part of the ARTSEDGE curriculum unit titled "Mark Twain, the Lincoln of Our Literature," asks students to examine samples of Twain's work in the context of pre- and post-Civil War America as a way of understanding the paradoxical themes and forms—of Romanticism, Realism, Idealism and Pragmatism—that prevail throughout much of his writings. Students are encouraged to probe William Dean Howells' characterization of Twain as "the Lincoln of our literature" as a backdrop to the study of Twain's work throughout the course of the unit.

The lesson Twain: Steamboat's a-Comin' (9-12), part of an ARTSEDGE curriculum unit titled "Mark Twain, the Lincoln of Our Literature," examines the mystique of rivers as inspiration for creative expression. It also provides students with a glimpse of the powerful influence the Mississippi River and its environs had on Mark Twain's writings. It sets some groundwork for students to consider, as their experience with Twain sources broadens, that even in the themes of his narratives and essays that appear to be far removed from his beloved "great Mississippi, the majestic, the magnificent Mississippi," there often seems to be a consistent undercurrent in which Twain measures life against the memories of his youthful days spent on the river and its shores.

The lesson Twain: An American Humorist (9-12) examines the diversity and intricacy of Mark Twain's humor, focusing particularly on the qualities that support the assertion made by William Dean Howells, Ernest Hemingway and others that Twain was the first "true" American writer.

Twain: Tom Sawyer—Mythic Adventurer (9-12) focuses on the content and style of development in Twain's "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" and explores the nature of Tom Sawyer as a youthful "American Adam." This lesson is the fourth in a four-part curriculum unit on Mark Twain titled "Mark Twain, The Lincoln of Our Literature."

EDSITEment
In the three-part lesson Mark Twain and American Humor (9-12), students examine structure and characterization in the short story and consider the significance of humor through a study of Mark Twain's "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County."

The lesson Critical Ways of Seeing The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in Context (9-12) asks students to combine Internet historical research with critical reading. They then produce several writing assignments exploring what readers see in Huckleberry Finn and why they see it that way.

Students read and explore the various methods for writing essays and their basis in rh