[1] 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.

"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.

[4] In the fall of 1890, Clemens attended Bryn Mawr College, where she was given the starring role of Phyllis in the play Iolanthe, began calling herself by her real first name "Olivia" and developed a close friendship with fellow student Louise Brownell[5] that some biographers have speculated may have been romantic in nature.

Clemens left the college after one semester, possibly because of her family's financial difficulties, because she found the studies too difficult, or because of her relationship with Brownell.

She was annoyed by her father's reputation as a "mere humorist" and felt he should represent himself as a serious writer instead of just as a funny man.

[8] In Europe she was at loose ends, bored by her family's evenings at home and annoyed by her father's frequent temperamental outbursts.

[11][12] Clemens chose not to accompany the family to Europe on Twain's lecture tour of 1895–1896, citing seasickness and a desire to recover her health and become an opera singer.

In August 1896, while visiting her former home in Hartford, Clemens developed a fever that turned into spinal meningitis.

"[13] She spent several days writing a 47-page prose poem partially addressed to the opera singer Maria Malibran, whom she had taken as a kind of role model.