Mark Twain Facts

Name: Date:

MARK TWAIN FACTS

Directions: Read these facts about Mark Twain. Using the “Main Ideas and Supporting Details” handout, sift and sort them into categories. 1. Twain’s first famous story “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” is a humorous story about a trick frog owned by a gold miner in California.

2. Mark Twain was the Vice-President of the American Anti-Imperialist League; he believed that the US should not limit the freedoms of people in other countries.

3. Many of Mark Twains’ younger characters are inspired by his life growing up in Missouri.

4. Mark Twain was known for wearing all white clothes.

5. His most famous novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which are stories about the adventures of two boys growing up in Missouri.

6. After failing as a gold miner in Nevada, Mark Twain got a job as a writer for the Territorial Enterprise where he developed material for many of his early writings.

7. Mark Twain’s novels A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and The Gilded Age criticized politics in the US.

8. Early in his career, Mark Twain was considered a writer in the Sagebrush School, a group of writers in Nevada writing about the life of miners in the Gold Rush.

9. Throughout his life, Twain was concerned with making sure that young people had a chance to learn and grow up in a safe environment. In 1906, he founded The Angel Fish and Aquarium Club for girls.

10. Mark Twain once said, “I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning politics a man’s reasoning powers are not above the monkey’s.”