From 1874 to 1891 Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, lived with his family in the Mark Twain House you now face. The Clemens family had it designed by Edward Tuckerman Potter and built in the America High Gothic style; Clemens biographer Justin Kaplan called the house "part steamboat, part medieval fortress and part cuckoo clock. It was here that Clemens wrote many of his best-known works, including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Prince and the Pauper, Life on the Mississippi, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, A Tramp Abroad, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.
Poor financial investments prompted the Clemens family to move to Europe in 1891, and the Panic of 1893 further threatened their financial stability. To earn money and pay debts, Clemens, his wife Olivia, and their middle daughter Clara spent 1895–96 traveling so he could lecture; he later recounted that trip in Following the Equator (1897). Their other two daughters, Susy and Jean, had stayed behind, and Susy died at home on August 18, 1896, of spinal meningitis before the family could be reunited.
Notice the America High Gothic silhouette, part steamboat and part medieval fortress, that Edward Tuckerman Potter designed.