Webster Walk

Webster Walk. Salutes Another Famous American Author. Another popular man of letters, and a true American original that eventually made Hartford his home, was Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by his pen name, Mark Twain.

Twain started out as a printer’s apprentice and typesetter, and shared Webster’s love of letters and language from an especially American point of view. While Webster concentrated on correcting colloquial speech, Twain was intent to record it, helping to create and popularize a distinctively American literary genre. William Faulkner called Twain, the ‘father of American literature.’

Largely self-taught, and a voracious reader, he credited public libraries with being his best education. At various times, he worked as steamboat pilot, journalist, lecturer and author. He was also an adventurer, and an inveterate traveller, as well as a keen social observer, and a skilled humorist and satirist.

Many of his famous works went on to become American classics: such as The Adventures of Tom Swayer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, as well as A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, to name a few.

His home, the Mark Twain House and Museum, is open to the public in Hartford. We display here Twain’s twenty year plan for the improving of spelling in the English language (with apologies to Noah) and a few of his well-known quotations. . This historical marker is in West Hartford in Hartford County Connecticut