Letters from the Earth《Notes》

Mark Twain(1835-1910)was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in FloridaMissouri but lived as a child in HannibalMissourion the Mississippi River.He took the pen name Mark Twain from the call of the pilots on the river steamers which indicated that the water was twelve feet deep a safe depth for a steamer.During his early years he worked as a riverboat pilotnewspaper reporter printer and gold prospector. But then he turned to writing and became one of the greatest of American writers. Although his popular image is as the author of such humorous works as The adventures of Tom Sawyer and The adventures of Huckleberry Finn Twain had the other side that many have resulted form the bitter experiences of his life:financial failure and the deaths of his wife and daughters.His last writings are savage satiric and pessimistic.

Letters from the Earth is one of his later works.