The home of the writer Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) is located in Hartford, Connecticut and today it is known as The Mark Twain House & Museum.
Built in High Gothic style by Edward Tuckerman Potter, the house today is a National Historic Landmark. Twain wrote many of his best-known books in this house including the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Prince and the Pauper, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
Inside, there are 25 rooms with many dramatic features, and according to National Geographic, this house is one of the ten best historic homes in the world.The Clemens family moved into the home in 1874 and went to Europe in 1891 because of financial difficulties. Together with his wife and one of his daughters, he traveled around Europe and gave lectures to make money and pay off his debts.
The other two daughters stayed at home at that time and on August 18th, 1896, one of them, Susy, died of meningitis. After this tragedy, the family couldn’t live in the house anymore, so they sold it in 1903. A few years later, the building became a school, and later it functioned as an apartment building and a public library.
In 1929, the non-profit group Mark Twain Memorial rescued the house from demolition, and in 1962 it was declared a National Monument. During the time when the family lived in the house, the top floor was Mark’s private study where he wrote many of his books. He didn’t allow anyone to get inside except the cleaning staff.
On the second floor, there was a school room where Mrs. Clemens tutored her daughters, and they also had their own playroom and nursery.
It is said that Clemens played with his children very often and sometimes he would dress like an elephant. He loved his home so much and the people who lived around him. Some of his neighbors were authors including Isabella Beecher Hooker and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Also, some of the most notable guests who visited Mark often were George Washington Cable, William Dean Howells, Thomas Bailey Aldrich and the authors Edwin Booth and Henry Irving.
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