Born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, Twain is best known for his stories of American boyhood, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.

Lauded as the greatest humourist America has ever produced, even Faulkner called him the "father of American literature" and Hemingway said "All modern literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn". Known for his wit and humour, he exposed social injustices and class barriers in his work, and was commonly described ass a moralist and idealist.