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Myers Literary Guide:
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The North-East
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MARK TWAIN ( 1835 - 1910) The popular American author's real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens, and he was born in Florida, Missouri. His mother, however, was a Lampton, a variant spelling of Lambton, the noted County Durham family. The character Huckleberry Finn was based on her favourite cousin William Lampton. Lady Lucinda Lambton, who had (unknowingly) named her own son Huckleberry thirty-five years before, discovered this on visiting America in the late 1990s. In her book Old New World, she describes how, close beside William's grave, she found others belonging to the Lamptons - Lucy, Lucinda and Lucie. No such names had existed in the Durham Lambton family before Lucinda herself. It seems that these American Lambtons had emigrated in the 18th century 'to escape the foolish fraud of hereditary aristocracy'. Thus, when their father died, it was the younger sons in England who succeeded. Thereafter, the American Lamptons considered the inheritance theirs. Twain, perhaps oddly for 'the first and greatest democratic writer of the New World' as Lady Lucinda calls him, became obsessed by the saga, weaving it into every one of his tales.
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