Did You Know That Mark Twain Started Smoking When He Was 8 Years Old?
In fact, he loved cigars and found smoking very relaxing.
Other fun facts about the author:
His real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens.
His father died of pneumonia when he was 12, and Mark Twain became an apprentice printer at the Missouri Courier. Later, he wrote for local newspapers.
The author also worked as a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi river. He got his pen name, Mark Twain, from steamboat slang for 12 feet of water.
During the Civil War, the writer sided with the South, and served in the Confederate Army only for a couple of weeks before heading West to San Francisco where he prospected for silver and gold before resuming his journalism career.
Mark Twain hated his home state, Missouri, and said: “If you are born in my state, you pronounce it Missourah. If you are not born in my state, you pronounce it Missouree. But if you are born in my state, and you have to live your entire life in my state you pronounce it misery.”
He moved to Hartford, Connecticut in 1874. Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, was his neighbor.
Mark Twain started a publishing house that soon went bankrupt. He had debts most of his life due to bad investments.
3 of his 4 children died before him.
Ernest Hemingway was a fan of Mark Twain, especially of his work The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Cécile Sune was born in Lyon, France, and her obsession with books started when she was 14. Her grandparents had lent her Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, and she spent part of the summer indoors reading. Needless to say, her tan didn't really improve that year! It was also around that time that Cécile fell in love with the English language. Several years later, in 1999, Cécile moved to Toronto, Canada, with her cat and 5 suitcases. Her love of reading greatly increased when she discovered that English books were much cheaper than French novels. In 2013, she decided to start a blog to share her passion. Cécile now lives in Ottawa, Canada, with her husband and their daughter, and works as a freelance translator (CS Revision).
In fact, she is in the Guinness Book of World Records for this amazing achievement, and she authored a total of 723 books in her career. She mostly penned romantic fiction, but she also wrote health books, cookbooks, plays, and biographies. All her work was dictated. Other fun facts about the author: During World War II, she gathered wedding dresses for service brides. In the 1960s, she campaigned for the rights…
She began using morphine to ease the after-effects of typhoid fever contracted while working as a nurse during the Civil War. The illness was at the time treated with mercury, which caused pain, weakness and hallucinations to the patients. In addition, Louisa May Alcott sometimes suffered from deep depression. In fact, she might even have been bipolar. Other interesting facts about the author: Her parents supported the abolition of slavery…