Susy Clemens

Susy Clemens
Clemens as a young teenager, ca. 1885
Born	Olivia Susan Clemens (1872-03-19)March 19, 1872 Elmira, New York, U.S.
Died	August 18, 1896(1896-08-18) (aged 24) Hartford, Connecticut, U.S.
Cause of death	Spinal meningitis
Resting place	Woodlawn Cemetery
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Bryn Mawr College
Occupation	Writer, literary critic
Parent(s)	Mark Twain Olivia Langdon Clemens
Relatives	Langdon Clemens (brother) Clara Clemens (sister) Jean Clemens (sister)

Olivia Susan "Susy" Clemens (March 19, 1872 – August 18, 1896), was the second child and oldest daughter of Samuel Clemens, who wrote under the pen name Mark Twain, and his wife Olivia Langdon Clemens. She inspired some of her father's works, wrote her own biography of him that Twain later published as part of his autobiography, and acted as a literary critic. Her father was heartbroken when she died of spinal meningitis at age twenty-four.

Her biography of her father was published in 1988 in its entirety as Papa: An Intimate Biography of Mark Twain, a volume which also included a biography of Susy Clemens and her correspondence with her father.

Born in Elmira, New York, Clemens was largely raised in Hartford, Connecticut, but went abroad with her family to England in 1873 and again in 1878–79. At age thirteen, she wrote a biography of her father that Twain later included in his Chapters from my Autobiography. The biography described her impressions of her father and her happy family life. Her father wrote: "I had had compliments before, but none that touched me like this; none that could approach it for value in my eyes." Like her father, she was interested in writing, and wrote her own plays and acted in them during her childhood and adolescence. Twain later described his favorite daughter as intelligent, thoughtful, sensitive and vivacious and said he had regarded her as a prodigy. "She was a magazine of feelings and they were of all kinds and of all shades of force; she was so volatile, as a little child, that sometimes the whole battery came into play in the short compass of a day," he wrote after her death. "She was full of life, full of activity, full of fire, her waking hours were a crowding and hurrying procession of enthusiasms ... Joy, sorrow, anger, remorse, storm, sunshine, rain, darkness -- they were all there: They came in a moment and they were gone as quickly. In all things she was intense: in her this characteristic was not a mere glow, dispensing warmth, but a consuming fire." He based the character of Joan of Arc in his book Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc on his eldest daughter as he remembered her at age seventeen.