ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -On April 9, 1859, a 23-year-old Missouri youth named Samuel Langhorne Clemens receives his steamboat pilot’s license. Clemens had signed on as a pilot’s apprentice in 1857 while on his way to Mississippi.

Detailed explanation-2: -Clemens had always wanted to become a steamboat man on the great Mississippi River, so he returned to the land of his youth to become a pilot, that is, one who steered the great paddle ships safely past the sandbars, rocks, floating trees, shifting currents and debris along the Mississippi.

Detailed explanation-3: -Twain was a traveling journalist, humorist, writer, and lecturer whose most famous novels are The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. His childhood in Hannibal along the Mississippi River inspired colorful tales of adventures on the waterway.

Detailed explanation-4: -Life on the Mississippi, memoir of the steamboat era on the Mississippi River before the American Civil War by Mark Twain, published in 1883. The book begins with a brief history of the river from its discovery by Hernando de Soto in 1541.