Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was a famous American author born in 1835 in Florida, Missouri. He grew up along the Mississippi River in Hannibal, Missouri and initially worked as a printer and riverboat pilot. Some of his most notable works include Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Twain was one of the most quoted authors of his time and his books helped define American literature, influencing hundreds of subsequent works. He died in 1910, just after the perihelion of Halley's Comet with which he shared a birth month.