The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Modern American (1885) 1. The Author and His Times Mark Twain, the pen name of Samuel Clemens, was born in Florida, Missouri in 1835. When he was four, his family moved to Hannibal, Missouri, the setting for many of his books. His father died when he was 12. After his father died, he went to work as a printeršs apprentice and eventually as a printer in Missouri, St. Louis, and New York often writing a few works himself for periodicals. He worked as a printer and a reporter selling much of his work to newspapers. He continually moved from town to town. In 1857, he decided to move to South America to make a fo