Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 3: The Complete and Authoritative Edition

by Mark Twain, Harriet E. Smith (Editor), Benjamin Griffin (Editor), Victor Fischer (Editor), Michael Barry Frank (Editor)

Overview

The surprising final chapter of a great American life.

When the first volume of Mark Twain’s uncensored Autobiography was published in 2010, it was hailed as an essential addition to the shelf of his works and a crucial document for our understanding of the great humorist’s life and times. This third and final volume crowns and completes his life’s work. Like its companion volumes, it chronicles Twain's inner and outer life through a series of daily dictations that go wherever his fancy leads.

Created from March 1907 to December 1909, these dictations present Mark Twain at the end of his life: receiving an honorary degree from Oxford University; railing against Theodore Roosevelt; founding numerous clubs; incredulous at an exhibition of the Holy Grail; credulous about the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays; relaxing in Bermuda; observing (and investing in) new technologies. The Autobiography’s “Closing Words” movingly commemorate his daughter Jean, who died on Christmas Eve 1909. Also included in this volume is the previously unpublished “Ashcroft-Lyon Manuscript,” Mark Twain’s caustic indictment of his “putrescent pair” of secretaries and the havoc that erupted in his house during their residency.

Fitfully published in fragments at intervals throughout the twentieth century, Autobiography of Mark Twain has now been critically reconstructed and made available as it was intended to be read. Fully annotated by the editors of the Mark Twain Project, the complete Autobiography emerges as a landmark publication in American literature.


Editors: Benjamin Griffin and Harriet Elinor Smith
Associate Editors: Victor Fischer, Michael B. Frank, Amanda Gagel, Sharon K. Goetz, Leslie Diane Myrick, Christopher M. Ohge

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520279940
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	10/15/2015
Series:	Mark Twain Papers , #12
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	792
Sales rank:	187,209
Product dimensions:	7.10(w) x 10.10(h) x 2.40(d)

About the Author

Benjamin Griffin and Harriet Elinor Smith are editors 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.

Date of Birth:

November 30, 1835

Date of Death:

April 21, 1910

Place of Birth:

Florida, Missouri

Place of Death:

Redding, Connecticut

Editorial Reviews

09/07/2015
This third and final volume of Twain's half-million-word autobiography begins with an amusing reminiscence about a rascally jewelry salesman, dictated in 1907, and ends with a wail of anguish over the tragic death of his daughter, Jean, in 1909. In between, there occur all manner of engrossing events and experiences, including Twain's receipt of an honorary degree from Oxford University, employment of a man masquerading as a housemaid, luncheon with George Bernard Shaw, travels abroad to England and Bermuda, and audiences with Andrew Carnegie and other famous personalities of the day. Twain recalls his twilight years' main events in roughly chronological order, but each serves as a touchstone for digressions and reveries on experiences described in his autobiography's two earlier volumes. Twain's expansiveness occasionally deflates into numbing levels of detail, but he is usually as sharp and witty here as he in his fiction, particularly when gleefully goring his favorite bête noir, President Theodore Roosevelt. Life, in Twain's opinion, is a "procession of episodes and experiences which seem large when they happen, but which diminish to trivialities as soon as we get perspective upon them." This fascinating volume gives lie to that assertion, and closes the book on the remarkable life of one of America's most outstanding literary talents. With extensive scholarly annotations. B+w photos. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"Rambling, cantankerous, funny—and sad."

The Christian Science Monitor

"Chock-full of his trademark outbursts and his sly sense of humor."

The Boston Globe

"Reading the autobiography is like sitting in a room with Mark Twain and listening to him talking about whatever happens to come into his mind. As such, it is truly fascinating."

Resources for American Literary Study

"[Twain] lives on through his works, including this landmark publication."

San Francisco Chronicle

"Rambling; charming; vitriolic; confessional (“I am fond of pomp and display”); shot through with wit, lyricism and regret. . . . Captivating and invaluable."

The Washington Post

"His deep love for the language, for expression, for telling what is on his mind and in his heart, keeps him talking to us, right up to the very end of the autobiography, when the death of his daughter Jean leads him to close it forever."

Hartford Courant

"The abundant morsels here give us a glimpse into the big human heart of our great American author."

Buffalo News

"The verdict: admirable, opulent, incredibly thorough, surely a treasure trove beyond price for Twain scholars, endlessly pleasant to paw through for those of us who find Twain hilarious and moving and blunt and inimitable."

Christian Century

"There was a private Sam Clemens and a public Mark Twain, and both of them can be found in Autobiography of Mark Twain."

National Post

"[Twain] lives on through his works, including this landmark publication."

San Francisco Chronicle

"The abundant morsels here give us a glimpse into the big human heart of our great American author who seems to grow more popular with every passing year."

Buffalo News - Thomas J. Reigstad

★ 2015-08-11
In which the greatest of American writers goes into the night—and not such a good night at that, and not at all gently. Covering just the last couple of years in Twain's long life, this is the concluding volume of the masterful University of California edition of his autobiography: unexpurgated, cross-referenced, and richly annotated. (Few modern readers would understand, for instance, that Twain was alluding to a Thackeray story in calling one unfortunate fellow "Jeames.") The swan song reinforces things well established by its predecessors. For one, Twain lived a whirlwind life, interested in almost everything, particularly when it was cool, modern, and gadgety; he was always investing in tools and toys, sometimes losing his shirt thereby. For another, Twain, cynic though he appeared to be, tended to trust people, sometimes at great cost. A large section of this volume is devoted to an aggrieved account of a yearslong episode in which members of Twain's staff bilked him of money, land, and jewels, taking advantage of the old man. Even when angry, though, the author puts humor to work, writing of one of them, "the first thing I ever noticed about Miss Lyon was her incredible laziness. Laziness was my own specialty, & I did not like this competition." Elsewhere, Twain, a jet-setter before jets, writes with both humor and a certain archness of people like Theodore Roosevelt and Andrew Carnegie, the latter of whom he sends up for philanthropy from the supposed kindness of his heart: "He has bought fame and paid cash for it," Twain writes, "he has deliberately projected and planned out this fame for himself; he has arranged that his name shall be famous in the mouths of men for centuries to come." Of considerable interest to all readers of Twain but especially to working writers following Twain's habit of tracking his astonishing writing income—even though, as he writes, "if I should run out of all other nourishment I believe I could live on compliments."

Kirkus Reviews