Mark Twain's Autobiography VOL 1 & 2

by Mark Twain

Overview

"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 The strict instruction that many of these texts remain unpublished for 100 years meant that when they came out, he would be "dead, and unaware, and indifferent," and that he was therefore free to speak his "whole frank mind."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.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940013663541
Publisher:	WDS Publishing
Publication date:	01/16/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	649 KB

About the Author

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910), best known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an author and humorist noted for the novels The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (which has been called "The Great American Novel") and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, among many other books. Twain was raised in Hannibal, Missouri, which later provided the setting for Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, and he spent time as a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River before finding fame as a writer.

Date of Birth:

November 30, 1835

Date of Death:

April 21, 1910

Place of Birth:

Florida, Missouri

Place of Death:

Redding, Connecticut

Editorial Reviews

“Everywhere there are arresting passages in which the author’s unrelenting candor shines through.”

Evening Standard

“It feels like a form of time travel. One moment you’re on horseback in the Hawaiian islands - or recovering from saddle boils with a cigar in your mouth - and the next moment you’re meeting the Viennese maid.”

nternational Herald Tribune

“. . . the value of this volume comes not from the new information about his life but rather from the way in which it reproduces the torrent of his wit, the impressibility of his voice, more fully than ever before.”

Sunday Telegraph

“For our grasp of Mark Twain -- for our belief, ever since he burst on the scene in 1865, that we know him through his prose -- the book is a gift and a treasure.“

The American Spectator

“Neither should the fact that century after the book concluded - with the author’s death - much of it still reads as compulsively as if it were being dictated in the next room.”

The Observer