Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 1 (Mark Twain Papers): The Complete and Authoritative Edition - Hardcover

Mark Twain

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0520267192 ISBN 13: 9780520267190

Publisher: University of California Press, 2010

Synopsis

'I've struck it!' Mark Twain wrote in a 1904 letter to a friend. 'And I will give it away - to you. You will never know how much enjoyment you have lost until you get to dictating your autobiography.' Thus, after dozens of false starts and hundreds of pages, Twain embarked on his 'Final (and Right) Plan' for telling the story of his life. His innovative notion - to 'talk only about the thing which interests you for the moment' - meant that his thoughts could range freely. The strict instruction that many of these texts remain unpublished for 100 years meant that when they came out, he would be 'dead, and unaware, and indifferent,' and that he was therefore free to speak his 'whole frank mind.' The year 2010 marks the 100th anniversary of Twain's death. In celebration of this important milestone and in honor of the cherished tradition of publishing Mark Twain's works, "UC Press" is proud to offer for the first time Mark Twain's uncensored autobiography in its entirety and exactly as he left it. This major literary event brings to readers, admirers, and scholars the first of three volumes and presents Mark Twain's authentic and unsuppressed voice, brimming with humor, ideas, and opinions, and speaking clearly from the grave as he intended.

About this title

About the Author

Harriet Elinor Smith is an editor at the Mark Twain Project, which is housed within the Mark Twain Papers, the world's largest archive of primary materials by this major American writer. Under the direction of General Editor Robert H. Hirst, the Project's editors are producing the first comprehensive edition of all of Mark Twain's writings.

From the Back Cover

"Mark Twain dictated much of this book--now it is a book at last--from a big rumpled bed. Reading it is a bit like climbing in there with him."--Roy Blount, Jr.

"To say that the editors have done an extremely good job is a little like saying the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel does a good job of keeping the rain off the Pope's head. It is true but it doesn't give even a whiff of the grandeur of the thing."--Robert D. Richardson, author of Emerson: The Mind on Fire

"Mark Twain, always so blithely ahead of his time, has just outdone himself: he's brought us an Autobiography from beyond the grave: a hundred-year-old relic that yet manages to accomplish something new. It anticipates the Cubism just taking form in Samuel Clemens's last years, by exploding the confines of orderliness, sequence, the dutiful march of this-then-that. In so doing, it gives us not simply Mark Twain's life--that is the prosaic work of biographers--but the ways in which he thought of his life: in all the fragmented recollection, distraction, creation, revision and dreaming that make up the true, divinely jumbled devices we all use to recapture experience and feeling. If this prodigious and prodigal pastiche were a machine, it would be the Paige typesetter--except that it works."--Ron Powers, author of Mark Twain: A Life

From the Inside Flap

"Mark Twain dictated much of this book now it is a book at last from a big rumpled bed. Reading it is a bit like climbing in there with him." Roy Blount, Jr.

"To say that the editors have done an extremely good job is a little like saying the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel does a good job of keeping the rain off the Pope's head. It is true but it doesn't give even a whiff of the grandeur of the thing." Robert D. Richardson, author of Emerson: The Mind on Fire

"Mark Twain, always so blithely ahead of his time, has just outdone himself: he's brought us an Autobiography from beyond the grave: a hundred-year-old relic that yet manages to accomplish something new. It anticipates the Cubism just taking form in Samuel Clemens's last years, by exploding the confines of orderliness, sequence, the dutiful march of this-then-that. In so doing, it gives us not simply Mark Twain's life that is the prosaic work of biographers but the ways in which he thought of his life: in all the fragmented recollection, distraction, creation, revision and dreaming that make up the true, divinely jumbled devices we all use to recapture experience and feeling. If this prodigious and prodigal pastiche were a machine, it would be the Paige typesetter except that it works." Ron Powers, author of Mark Twain: A Life

Edition details

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0520267192
• ISBN 13: 9780520267190
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 760
• Editor: Harriet Elinor Smith, Benjamin Griffin, Victor Fischer, Michael B. Frank, Sharon K. Goetz, Leslie Diane Myrick