Mark Twain was born Samuel L. Clemens in Florida, Missouri on November 30, 1835. He worked as a printer for a time, and then became a steamboat pilot. He traveled in the West, writing humorous sketches for newspapers. In 1865, he wrote the short story, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, which was very well received. He then began a career as a humorous travel writer and lecturer, publishing The Innocents Abroad in 1869, Roughing It in 1872, and, co-authored with Charles Dudley Warner, Gilded Age in 1873. His best-known works are The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Mississippi Writing: Life on the Mississippi (1883), and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). He died of a… heart attack on April 21, 1910.
Author Cathleen Schine was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut in 1953. She received a BA from Barnard College in 1976. She is both a novelist and a freelance writer. Two of her novels, The Love Letters and Rameau's Niece, were made into movies. She has also written for The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books and Family Circle. She currently lives in New York City.