Tony Rossiter
Commonly referred to as ‘the father of American literature’, Mark Twain (real name Samuel Langhorne Clemens) was a humorist, chronicler of American life, short-story writer, novelist, entrepreneur, publisher and a lecturer who became well-known for his humorous talks (perhaps not unlike today’s stand-up comedy). Here I’ll focus on his two famous novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) which has often been suppressed in American schools, but is regarded by many critics as ‘the great American novel’.