Tom Sawyer, Detective

Tom Sawyer, Detective by Mark Twain, 1896.


Mark Twain (1835 - 1910), born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, was raised in Hannibal, Missouri. His wit and satire, in prose and in speech, earned praise from critics and peers, and he was a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists, and European royalty.
He worked as a typesetter and a riverboat pilot before heading west to fail at mining. In 1865, his humorous story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" brought him international attention and was even translated into classic Greek.
Twain earned a great deal of money from his writings and lectures, but he invested in ventures that lost most of it - notably the Paige Compositor, a mechanical typesetter that failed because of its complexity and imprecision. He filed for bankruptcy in the wake of these financial setbacks, but he eventually chose to pay all his pre-bankruptcy creditors in full.