Samuel Langhorne Clemens , known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, essayist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced", and William Faulkner called him "the father of American literature". His novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , with the latter often called the "Great American Novel". Twain also wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and Pudd'nhead Wilson , and co-wrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today with Charles Dudley Warner.