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Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1

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About the Book

About the author, from our blog.

Available in Audiobook: Mark Twain

Table of contents.

• This is Mark Twain
• CBS Sunday Morning segment
• C-SPAN BookTV interview with editor Harriet Smith
• New York Times essay
• The Guardian review
• San Francisco Chronicle review
• Village Voice article
• Philadelphia Inquirer feature story
• New York Post review
• Wall Street Journal article
• The Huffington Post review
• Associated Press article
• East Bay Express feature story
• Newsweek Excerpt
• Entertainment Weekly review
• Bay Citizen interview with editor Harriet Smith
• Los Angeles Times review
• Morning Edition feature
• London Review of Books review
• Robert Hirst's talk on C-SPAN Classroom

“Sometimes the autobiography seems Twain’s letter to posterity. At other times, reading it feels like eavesdropping on a conversation he is having with himself. . . . This first installment of Twain’s autobiography brings us closer to all of him than we have ever come before.” — New York Review Of Books

“Dip into the first enormous volume of Twain’s autobiography that he had decreed should not appear until 100 years after his death. And Twain will begin to seem strange again, alluring and still astonishing, but less sure-footed, and at times both puzzled and puzzling in ways that still resonate with us, though not the ways we might expect.” — New York Times

“There’s really nothing sulfurous about this book. Mark Twain is terrific company, plain and simple. He knew everyone, went everywhere, seemed to be interested in everything and is capable of making the reader — in 2010 — laugh on nearly every page. And this is not, strictly speaking, an autobiography. It’s an autobiographical miscellany, a collection of Twain’s many attempts to write about his extraordinary life. . . . This is a book for dipping, not plunging. Read, as Twain might put it, until interest pales, and then jump. 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 he called, in a private joke, ‘Wuthering Heights.’ We can hardly wait for Volume 2.” — New York Times/The Opinion Pages

“Twain generously provides the 21st century aficionado a marvelous read. His crystalline humor and expansive range are a continuous source of delight and awe. . . . [He] has given us ‘an astonishment’ in his autobiography with his final, beautifully unorganized genius and intemperate thoughts. Pull up a chair and revel.” — Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Twain would approve!” — Bookideas.com

“Twain's autobiography, finally available after a century, is a garrulous outpouring—and every word beguiles.” — Wall Street Journal

“Brimming with Twain’s humor, ideas and opinions, this is a book for anyone interested in the writer’s work and life.” — Curledup.com

“Mission accomplished, Mr. Clemens.” — Boston Review

“Promises a no-holds barred perspective on Twain’s life, and will be rich with rambunctious, uncompromising opinions.” — Herald Scotland

“Pure Twain at his typically discursive, rambling, and droll. . . . The bard of Hannibal still has much to say.” — American Heritage

“A major achevement.” — Choice

“When Twain dictated his memoirs, he said he wanted to speak his whole, frank mind. But he didn't want the full text published until he'd been dead 100 years, ‘unaware and indifferent.’ With the uncensored Twain finally here, we're the furthest thing from indifferent.” — Time Magazine

“From Blair to Brand, Caine to Cole, the bestseller chart is awash with memoirs -- but none offer the extreme reading of the Autobiography of Mark Twain.” — The Times

“From the army of Twain scholars at the University of California’s Mark Twain Project, comes the dazzling first volume of the ultimate, authoritative three-volume Autobiography of Mark Twain. . . . Twain’s writing here is electric, alternately moving and hilarious. He couldn’t write a ho-hum sentence. . . . To read this volume is to be introduced to Twain as if, thrillingly, for the first time. — Library Journal

“His '’whole frank mind,’ sharp and funny, is seared onto every page. A” — Entertainment Weekly

“Twian’s ‘Final Plan’ has been released in a truly spectacular first volume of his posthumous ‘Autobiography’.” — Engineering & Technology

“What we have here amounts to the contents of Mark Twain’s attic: all the stuff that didn’t fit in the living quarters and that the man tossed upstairs, where for a century it gathered dust, cobwebs, and rumors.” — The New Republic

“His fiction belongs in the classics section, but this autobiography is a 21st century bestseller.” — The Missourian/Vox

“If Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the first Great American Novel, then Twain’s autobiography is set to be the first great read of the decade. — The Sunday Business Post (Ireland)

“In its freewheeling, associative blend of character studies, press cuttings, family history, letters and public speeches, it evokes Twain's personality with a near-hallucinatory clarity. . . . Twain employs a light touch, never pausing too long on the same scene, never letting accuracy stand in the way of a good story, putting off academic rigour for the 300 pages of endnotes he probably knew someone would furnish. Flights of fancy inspire anecdotes and vice versa in inexhaustible succession.” — The National

“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.” — International Herald Tribune

“It is a thoughtful and humorous reflection of events he lived through.” — Eat Anglican Daily Times

“Mark Twain is his own greatest character in this brilliant self-portrait. . . . Laced with Twain's unique blend of humor and vitriol, the haphazard narrative is engrossing, hugely funny, and deeply revealing of its author's mind. . . . Twain's memoirs are a pointillist masterpiece from which his vision of America--half paradise, half swindle--emerges with indelible force.” — Publishers Weekly: Nonfiction (2)

“In [this book] we get to enjoy the society of latter-day Mark Twain. . . . A matured, calmer, and fundamentally funnier Twain who seems more comfortable in his own skull.” — The Stranger

“Leaks are coming slowly, but steadily, like singles from a highly anticipated album, but a new excerpt from Newsweek reads like a smash hit, as Twain shows off his wit and schools a librarian.” — Village Voice

“I start reading Twain’s Autobiography at any page and don’t want to stop, for the sheer voluptuous pleasure of the prose.” — Twitter: Roger Ebert

“A major achievement.” — Choice

“A treasure trove for serious Twain readers.” — Booklist

“The author’s authentic voice speaks clearly from the grave - brimming with humor, ideas and opinions.” — Radio Times

“. . . 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 irrepressibility of his voice, more fully than ever before.” — Sunday Telegraph

"'I can't wait to read that,' Stewart says. 'I just wish I could book him on my show.'" — Associated Press

“Pure Twain—crotchety, sarcastic, funny as hell, cynical, profound, and narrated by someone aware of his approaching death.” — Counterpunch

“One of the most heavily anticipated events in the literary world.” — Ft. Worth Star Telegram

“Dangerously funny and opinionated, Twain was censored by himself, his family, and his literary executors. Here at last is his ‘whole frank mind.’” — American History

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

“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

“The Autobiography, as it begins here, is richly humorous, self-deprecating (if not always in earnest), full of anecdotes about great and small. . . . The meandering, the discursiveness, the parentheses promising the later resumption of a story (’And some time I wish to talk about that’), the mockery (desolate at bottom) of pretension, all these distinguish this first volume. We will have to mark time until there is more, but the wait is bound to be worthwhile. It's been a century coming, after all.”” — The Australian

“The book gives an inside view into the life and mind one of the most talented writers in American history.” — Springfield (Ma) Republican

“The editors have done a remarkable job with the ramblings of a very good rambler, producing a volume the size of a small encyclopedia, with two more to follow.” — Daily Telegraph

“The fact that a 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

“The merit of the autobiography is its revelation of every facet of Samuel Clemens – how modern a figure he is, and how topical his concerns. Take the polemical verve of Christopher Hitchens. Toss in the fun-poking news instincts of the American broadcaster Jon Stewart. Add the traveller's curiosity and gentle wit of a Bill Bryson, plus the raw energy of Ernest Hemingway, and then stir in an entire Oxford dictionary of aphorisms, and you start to get an approximation of a man who spanned virtually every literary genre – and in the process became one of the most quoted (and misquoted) writers to walk the earth.” — The Independent

“The tone is crisp, at times scandalously so, but often it is the shock of the unmediated truth that is so funny.” — Eastern Daily Press

“This first volume (of three) is impossible not to admire, so fluent and entertaining a picture does it provide of Twain’s life. . . . The text becomes a picaresque adventure story, full of brilliant characters and scarcely believable anecdotes, balancing the mordant wit so prominent in Twain’s fiction with affectionate portraits of those close to him.” — Prospect

“This first volume (of three) is impossible not to admire, so fluent and entertaining a picture does it provide of Twain’s life.” — Prospect

“Twain's uncensored writings show the same penchant for humor and sharp social commentary as his novels.” — Houston Chronicle

“Twain’s Autobiography is ... experimental, but not free-form. To borrow his metaphor, his narrative stream is less like a canal than a tributary—and it’s well worth panning for the gold. Above all else, the work uniquely captures the processes of individual memory.” — The Brooklyn Rail

• 2010 PROSE Award for Excellence in Humanities 2011 , American Publishers Award for Professional and Scholarly Excellence
• 2010 PROSE Award for Biography & Autobiography 2011 , Association of American Publishers, Inc.
• Winner 2011 , Bookbuilders West Book Show
• Gold Medal in the category of Contribution to Publishing for the 80th California Book Awards 2011 , Commonwealth Club of California
• NCIBA Book of the Year Award 2011 , Northern California Independent Booksellers Association
• Book of the Year Finalist in Nonfiction 2011 , Northern California Independent Booksellers Association (NCIBA)

Interview with the author.

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Mark Twain’s Riverboat Ramblings

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By Garrison Keillor

• Dec. 16, 2010

Samuel L. Clemens was a cheerful promoter of himself, and even after he’d retired from the lecture circuit, the old man liked to dress up as Mark Twain in a fresh white suit and take a Sunday morning stroll up Fifth Avenue just as churches were letting out and see the heads turn and hear his name murmured, the crowds of Presbyterians and Episcopalians standing awe-struck as the most beloved mustache in America passed by, tipping his silk hat to the ladies. Mr. Twain’s autobiography was meant to be a last stroll around the block, and to build up suspense and improve sales, Sam told everybody that he was writing one and that it contained material so explosive it would need to be embargoed for a hundred years. That century has passed now and here it is, Volume 1 of “The Complete Authentic Unexpurgated Edition, Nothing Has Been Omitted, Not Even Scandalous Passages Likely to Cause Grown Men to Gasp and Women to Collapse in Tears — No Children Under 7 Allowed to Read This Book Under Any Circumstance,” which made Sam front-page news when all three volumes of the “Autobiography of Mark Twain” were announced last spring. The book turns out to be a wonderful fraud on the order of the Duke and the Dauphin in their Shakespearean romp, and bravo to Samuel Clemens, still able to catch the public’s attention a century after he expired.

He speaks from the grave, he writes, so that he can speak freely — “as frank and free and unembarrassed as a love letter” — but there’s precious little frankness and freedom here and plenty of proof that Mark Twain, in the hands of academics, can be just as tedious as anybody else when he is under the burden of his own reputation. Here, sandwiched between a 58-page barrage of an introduction and 180 pages of footnotes, is a ragbag of scraps, some of interest, most of them not: travel notes, the dictated reminiscences of an old man in a dithery voice (“Shortly after my marriage, in 1870, I received a letter from a young man in St. Louis who was possibly a distant relative of mine — I don’t remember now about that” begins one story that goes nowhere), various false starts, anecdotes that must have been amusing at one time, a rough essay (with the author’s revisions carefully delineated) on Joan of Arc, a critique of the lecture performance of Petroleum V. Nasby, a recap of the clipper ship Hornet’s ill-fated voyage that ended in Hawaii in 1866, a piece about German compound words, an account of medicine on the frontier, well-worn passages from lectures, a fair amount of self-congratulation (“I expected the speech to go off well — and it did”), a detailed report on the testimony of Henry H. Rogers in a lawsuit in Boston, newspaper clippings, generous quotations from his daughter Susy’s writing about her father (“He always walks up and down the room while thinking and between each course at meals”), ruminations on his methodology of autobiographicizing (“I shall talk about the matter which for the moment interests me, and cast it aside and talk about something else the moment its interest for me is exhausted; . . . a complete and purposed jumble”), recollections of Reuel Gridley and other Hannibal classmates, and there is precious little that could be considered scandalous — maybe a rant against James W. Paige, the inventor of a typesetting machine that Sam lost $170,000 on: “If I had his nuts in a steel trap I would shut out all human succor and watch that trap till he died” — but you have to wade through 18 pages of mind-numbing inventory of the Countess Massiglia’s Villa di Quarto, which he leased in Florence (“I shall go into the details of this house, not because I imagine it differs much from any other old-time palace or new-time palace on the continent of Europe, but because ­every one of its crazy details interests me, and therefore may be expected to interest others of the human race, particularly women”), the only point of which is that the man can afford to rent a palace that is fancier than anything you’d find in Missouri. His wife is dying, and he compiles an inventory of furniture.

Here is a powerful argument for writers’ burning their papers — you’d like to be remembered for “The Innocents Abroad” and “Life on the Mississippi” and the first two-thirds of “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and not for excruciating passages of hero worship of General Grant and his son Fred and accounts of your proximity to the general and your business dealings as the publisher of his memoirs, which only reminds the reader that the general wrote a classic autobiography, and you tried to and could not.

Think twice about donating your papers to an institution of higher learning, Famous Writer: someday they may be used against you.

Olivia Clemens’s nickname for her husband was Youth, and she knew him up close. Boyish high jinks are his strong suit, and energetic high spirits and sly irreverence. Here is Sam Clemens at 14 dancing naked in a room, unaware that girls are watching from behind a screen — well, he said he was unaware anyway, and why not take his word for it? — and the story of Jim Wolf climbing half-naked up the roof to silence the cats, and Sam tricking his mother into putting her hand in his jacket pocket, where he had stuffed a dead bat. Even in his maturity, he could take an appreciative boy’s view of his neighbor, the author of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”:

“Harriet Beecher Stowe . . . was a near neighbor of ours in Hartford, with no fences between. . . . Her mind had decayed, and she was a pathetic figure. She wandered about all the day long in the care of a muscular Irish woman. Among the colonists of our neighborhood the doors always stood open in pleasant weather. Mrs. Stowe entered them at her own free will, and as she was always softly slippered and generally full of animal spirits, she was able to deal in surprises, and she liked to do it. She would slip up behind a person who was deep in dreams and musings and fetch a war whoop that would jump that person out of his clothes.”

Mark Twain sprang to life at a young age. His voice is clear when Samuel Clemens was 17 and got to New York and wrote to his mother on Aug. 24, 1853: “My Dear Mother: you will doubtless be a little surprised, and somewhat angry when you receive this, and find me so far from home; but you must bear a little with me, for you know I was always the best boy you had, and perhaps you remember the people used to say to their children — ‘Now don’t do like Orion and Henry Clemens but take Sam for your guide!’ ” He took lodging on Duane Street near Broadway and got a job setting type in a large printing shop near the East River. He stuck around the city for a couple of months and wrote home about the fruit market, the Wild Men of Borneo displayed in P. T. Barnum’s museum on Broadway, the Crystal Palace on 42nd Street, and, knowing the letters would appear in his brother Orion’s Hannibal Journal, the boy struck up a style that we recognize as Twain (“I have taken a liking to the abominable place, and every time I get ready to leave, I put it off a day or so, from some unaccountable cause. It is just as hard on my conscience to leave New York as it was easy to leave Hannibal. I think I shall get off Tuesday, though”), a style that makes him seem fresh and friendly a century later. This is the Mark Twain people love to quote (“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society.” “A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way”), and whenever he hits his stride in the “Autobiography,” you feel happy for him — e.g., writing about Virginia City, Nev., in 1863:

“I secured a place in a nearby quartz mill to screen sand with a long-handled shovel. I hate a long-handled shovel. I never could learn to swing it properly. As often as any other way the sand didn’t reach the screen at all, but went over my head and down my back, inside of my clothes. It was the most detestable work I have ever engaged in, but it paid ten dollars a week and board — and the board was worthwhile, because it consisted not only of bacon, beans, coffee, bread and molasses, but we had stewed dried apples every day in the week just the same as if it were Sunday. But this palatial life, this gross and luxurious life, had to come to an end, and there were two sufficient reasons for it. On my side, I could not endure the heavy labor; and on the Company’s side, they did not feel justified in paying me to shovel sand down my back; so I was discharged just at the moment that I was going to resign.”

The reader hikes across the hard, dusty ground of a famous man’s reminiscences and is delighted to come across the occasional water hole. The famous man is in Berlin, hobnobbing with aristocracy at dinner at the ambassador’s, and meets a count: “This nobleman was of long and illustrious descent. Of course I wanted to let out the fact that I had some ancestors, too; but I did not want to pull them out of their graves by the ears, and I never could seem to get a chance to work them in in a way that would look sufficiently casual.” And this leads to a story about a Clemens ancestor running for office in Virginia whose opponent sent six young men with drums to stand in front of Mr. Clemens’s platform and drum during his speech. Mr. Clemens stood up and took out a revolver and spoke, softly: “I do not wish to hurt anybody, and shall try not to; but I have got just a bullet apiece for those six drums, and if you should want to play on them, don’t stand behind them.”

Twain takes a good swing at John D. Rockefeller, that monster of greed and ambition who liked to give little talks to his Baptist church about the beauty of holi­ness and following in the footsteps of the Master who alone can satisfy our hearts (“Satan, twaddling sentimental sillinesses to a Sunday school, could be no burlesque upon John D. Rockefeller. . . . He can’t be burlesqued — he is himself a burlesque”), and he preaches well against imperialism, but then you must hear about Robert Louis Stevenson (“His splendid eyes . . . burned with a smoldering rich fire under the penthouse of his brows, and they made him beautiful”) and the meeting with Helen Keller, who laughed at Sam’s jokes, the meeting with Lewis Carroll (“He was the stillest and shyest full-grown man I have ever met except ‘Uncle Remus’ ”), and then you start turning the pages two and three at a time.

Sam intended to give us an unblushing autobiography on the order of Casanova’s or Rousseau’s “Confessions” or Samuel Pepys’s diary, which Sam heartily admired, with its matter-of-fact inventories of parties attended and meals enjoyed and the skirts of chambermaids raised, but he knew that frankness comes with a price — “None of us likes to be hated, none of us likes to be shunned,” he said. “The man has yet to be born who could write the truth about himself” — and when he describes his brother Orion as having “an intense lust for approval,” he is surely describing himself: “He was so eager to be approved, so girlishly anxious to be approved by anybody and every­body, without discrimination, that he was commonly ready to forsake his . . . convictions at a moment’s notice. . . . He never acquired a conviction that could survive a disapproving remark from a cat.” The younger brother sees the older with a clear satirical eye, and what he sees is himself. Orion was foolish about money and so was Sam, a spendthrift to the end. Their father, Judge Clemens, before Sam was born, bought 75,000 acres of land in Tennessee. It contained coal, copper, iron, timber, oil, and produced wild grapes — “There’s millions in it!” said a cousin, James Lampton — and “it influenced our life,” Sam writes, it “cheered us up, and said ‘Do not be afraid — trust in me — wait.’ It kept us hoping and hoping, during 40 years, and forsook us at last. It put our energies to sleep and made visionaries of us — dreamers, and indolent. We were always going to be rich next year.” When their father died, “we began to manage it ourselves, . . . managed it all away except 10,000 acres,” which Orion traded for a house and a lot worth $250. The only one to turn a profit was Mark Twain, who turned Mr. Lampton (“the happy light in his eye, the abounding hope in his heart, the persuasive tongue, the miracle-­breeding imagination”) into Colonel Sel­lers in “The Gilded Age.”

It is the sad fate of an icon to be mummified alive, pickled by his own reputation, and midway through this dreary meander of a memoir, Sam throws up his hands in despair. “What a wee little part of a person’s life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself. . . . His acts and his words are merely the visible thin crust of his world . . . and they are so trifling a part of his bulk! a mere skin enveloping it. The mass of him is hidden — it and its volcanic fires that toss and boil, and never rest, night nor day. These are his life , and they are not written, and cannot be written. . . . Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man — the biography of the man himself cannot be written.” There is very little real feeling here and no volcanic fires until you come upon the account of the death of his daughter Susy, 24, in Hartford, of meningitis, on Aug. 18, 1896. It is agony to read. Susy took ill and was taken to the house in Hartford, the home of her childhood, where she once wrote: “We are a very happy family. We consist of Papa, Mamma, Jean, Clara and me.” Her mother and Clara set sail from England to be with her. Her sister Jean and an aunt and uncle and some servants and the minister Joseph Twichell were at the bedside. Meningitis set in on the 15th. She ate her last supper that evening. The next morning, a high fever and delirium. She mistook a gown hanging in the closet for her mother and clutched it, kissed it and wept. She went blind. She stroked the face of Katy Leary, the housemaid, and said her last word, “Mamma.”

The father writes, “How gracious it was that in that forlorn hour of wreck and ruin, with the night of death closing around her, she should have been granted that beautiful illusion . . . and the latest emotion she should know in life the joy and peace of that dear imagined presence.” Susy was unconscious for two days and died on a Tuesday at 7 p.m. — “she that had been our wonder and our worship.” Sam was in England when he got a cablegram on Aug. 18 that said, “Susy was peacefully released today.” (“It is one of the mysteries of our nature that a man, all unprepared, can receive a thunderstroke like that and live. . . . The intellect is stunned by the shock and but gropingly gathers the meaning of the words. . . . It will be years” before he truly knows “the magnitude of his disaster.”)

Of all the cruel deaths in the book — the death of Sam’s father just when prosperity seemed to be in his grasp; the death of his younger brother, Henry, when boilers burst on a steamboat in 1858 (Henry, who had taken a job on the boat at Sam’s urging); the death of the infant son Langdon Clemens, for which Sam felt responsible — the death of the beloved daughter far beyond her father’s love and care is a disaster from which there is no recovery. Boyishness cannot prevail, nor irreverence. The story can’t be written. The man buttons up his clothes and resigns himself to the inexpressible.

'The Autobiography Of Mark Twain': Satire To Spare

John McChesney

Author Samuel Langhorne Clemens, also known as Mark Twain, in July 1907. Ernest H. Mills/Hulton Archive hide caption

Mark Twain changed the rules of American fiction when, in Huckleberry Finn , he let a redneck kid tell his story in his own dialect. But the brilliant satirist had a hard time figuring out what rules to break as he struggled for years to tell his own life story. Now, 100 years after his death, Mark Twain's autobiography is being published the way the author himself wished -- from dictated stories collected by the University of California, Berkeley's Mark Twain Project. The first volume (of three) is out now, and the long-anticipated release is drawing attention from Twain-lovers around the world.

'Wander At Your Free Will All Over Your Life'

Twain knew early on that he wanted to write an autobiography, but his first efforts to put his story on paper failed. He attributed his troubles to trying to follow a chronological calendar; a plan that, he wrote, "starts you at the cradle and drives you straight for the grave, with no side excursions permitted."

Then, in 1904, Twain hit upon the right way to tell his story. "Start at no particular time of your life," he wrote. "Wander at your free will all over your life; talk only about the thing that interests you for the moment; drop it at the moment its interest starts to pale." Naturally, he couldn't resist a comic hyperbole, adding, "It's the first time in history such a method has been discovered."

But Twain still couldn't wrap his head around how to tell the tale of his life -- that is, until a few years later, when he wrote to his friend William Dean Howells about another eureka: dictation. "You will never know how much enjoyment you've lost until you get to dictating your biography," he wrote. "You'll be astonished at how like talk it is and how real it sounds."

Twain first tried dictating into Thomas Edison's new recording machine but didn't like it -- he was a man who strutted stages all over the world, delivering extemporaneous spiels. Twain needed a live audience to speak to, not a bloodless machine. He eventually found that audience in stenographer Josephine Hobby and author Albert Bigelow Paine, his first biographer.  Paine says Twain often dictated from his bed, clad in a handsome silk dressing gown of rich Persian pattern, propped against great snowy pillows. He also got up, paced the floor and waved his arms as he poured out nearly 2,000 pages of typescript over three years.

A lock of Twain's hair, from the UC Berkeley archive. John McChesney/NPR hide caption

A lock of Twain's hair, from the UC Berkeley archive.

'He Was Capable Of Composing Entire Paragraphs In His Head'

Robert Hirst, director of the Mark Twain Project, spoke about the resulting "talked" autobiography, which follows a less linear path than a more traditional written work. "If you think about it, this is really the culmination -- Mark Twain comes out of an oral tradition of humor," says Hirst. "And if you look at any of the books, you'll see this method of digression, even in Huck Finn -- basically it's a trip with digressions, strung off it like beads, beads on a string."

Inside the temperature-controlled room that houses the largest collection of Twain papers in the world, Hirst explains that Twain made only minor corrections on the stenographer's dictated notes. The elegant structure of Twain's autobiographical dictations shows that the writer was able to translate complex ideas into spontaneous speech. "The evidence is that he's capable of composing entire paragraphs in his head," says Hirst. " I have editors who would come in and say, 'Listen to this,' and they would read it to me. They couldn't believe that somebody could dictate that."

More Hard News Than Raw Confessions

Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 1 By Mark Twain Edited by Harriet E. Smith Hardcover, 760 pages University of California Press List price: $34.95

Read an Excerpt

In the autobiography itself, Twain mixes news and history, using something from the "infernal newspapers" as a jumping-off point for his dictation. For example, the American war in the Philippines was still going on in 1906, and Twain read that American troops cornered 600 of the Moro tribe, including women and children, in a volcanic crater. Leonard Wood -- Twain called him Theodore Roosevelt's "fragrant pet" -- gave the order to "kill or capture" the 600.

"Apparently our little Army considered that the 'or' left them authorized to kill or capture according to taste," Twain dictated. "And that their taste had remained what it had been for eight years, in our army out there ... the taste of Christian butchers."

But while the autobiography contains many such bare-knuckle outbursts, you won't find many revelations about Twain's inner moral struggles. Three months into the dictations, he says, "I have thought of 1,500 or 2,000 incidents in my life which I am ashamed of, but I have not gotten one of them to consent to go on paper yet."

" So he has realized that he's not a confessional autobiographer," says Hirst. "That's not what this is."

'You Can't See The Whole Thing For A Hundred Years'

Still, despite his lack of emotional confessions, Twain did say things in the first draft that his biographers and his daughter felt were too personal or too scalding to print in the early editions of the autobiography. As legend has it, Twain wanted people to wait 100, or even 500 years until after his death to see specific passages.

In spite of these efforts at suppression, however, most of the autobiography has surfaced over the years, and the supposed "embargo" has only led to increased interest in and sales for the book.

"I would say, can you spell marketing plan?" jokes Hirst. "If you say here's a little bit of the autobiography, but you can't see the whole thing for a hundred years, you're gonna sell a book. Mark Twain knew how to sell a book."

Historian Robert Hirst inside the Mark Twain archive. John McChesney/NPR hide caption

Historian Robert Hirst inside the Mark Twain archive.

Hirst also emphasizes that this new edition follows Twain's own design, while previous editions have been rearranged by editors who thought they had a better idea. The new edition also includes the numerous false starts Twain made before he settled into the dictation, so the reader might find it a bit of a slow read at times.

"It is heavy slogging," Hirst says. "But I would recommend what Mark Twain would recommend: If you're bored with it, SKIP."

For more information on the Mark Twain Project, visit www.marktwainproject.org or www.marktwainhouse.org.

Autobiography of Mark Twain

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Autobiography of Mark Twain

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Mark Twain: Tom Sawyer , Huckleberry Finn , and Selected Short Stories

9.5 h total length

Explore the Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain

Ernest Hemingway declared that “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called  Huckleberry Finn .”

For generations, Twain’s classic works have been required reading for every American citizen. These master works are essential reading for anyone who wants to understand American independence and liberty, the nature of American politics and its people, the character of the West, and the best way to live. And Twain delivers these profound lessons in a writing style that is hilarious and a delight to read.

You can discover the joys of Twain’s writing in Hillsdale’s free online course, “Mark Twain: Tom Sawyer , Huckleberry Finn , and Selected Short Stories.” Taught by Benedict Whalen and Kelly Franklin, professors of English at Hillsdale College, this nine-lecture course explores the major themes of Twain’s most important works.

By enrolling in this course you will receive free access to the course lectures, readings, and quizzes to aid you in the examination of the father of American literature.

We invite you to join us today in this essential study of this beloved American storyteller. 

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Lessons in this course.

The Study of Literature at Hillsdale College

The word  literature  has its origins in the ancient Latin word for  letter . Letters allow human beings to exercise their gift of reason through reading and writing. The masters of literature, such as Mark Twain, are able to employ words to represent reality accurately. Through their writings, they reveal to the reader truth about human nature and the world in which we live.

Truth-Telling and Democracy: Mark Twain’s “The Story of the Bad Little Boy” and “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”

Mark Twain, who employed both humor and satire in his writings, was a master of American realism. This artistic movement arose during the Civil War and sought to portray reality accurately and truthfully. Twain’s realism also had a democratic aim—it is anti-aristocratic, egalitarian, and supports natural rights.

“Not a Boy’s Book at All”: Tom Sawyer Part 1

Mark Twain’s commitment to realism is exemplified by his child heroes in  Tom Sawyer  and  Huckleberry Finn . Twain takes their consciousness seriously, and he also uses the children to reflect satirically on adults. A major theme of  Tom Sawyer —which is set on the edge of the Western frontier—is the tension between innocence and liberty on the one hand, and the necessity of civilization on the other.

“A Glittering Hero Once More”: Tom Sawyer Part 2

At the beginning of  The Adventures of Tom Sawyer , Tom selfishly runs away, allowing everyone in town to think he has died. However, throughout the book, Tom faces various challenges and begins to grow in moral goodness and empathy. In the end, Tom returns to save an innocent man’s life and becomes a true hero.

“Mostly a True Book; With Some Stretchers”: Huckleberry Finn Part 1

Mark Twain’s  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn  is set in a time period 40-50 years before the book was published in 1885. The narrator, Huckleberry Finn, is a poor southern boy who is pulled between different sets of influences, different systems of moral judgment, and different views of what justice is. The novel depicts the cultivation of a moral character in the midst of moral evils.

Shipwrecks, Pranks, and Feuds: Huckleberry Finn Part 2

As Huck Finn and the runaway slave Jim are on their journey down the Mississippi, they have a series of adventures. They encounter a wrecked steamboat—the Walter Scott, meet the feuding Shepherdsons and Grangerfords, and are tested in a dense fog. Jim becomes a father figure to Huck, whose moral education continues to progress.

“All Kings is Mostly Rapscallions”: Huckleberry Finn Part 3

As Huck and Jim continue their journey down the Mississippi, they meet two conmen pretending to be a duke and a king from Europe. The four of them travel together, witnessing a cross-section of American life, including a camp revival, a lynch mob, and a circus. During these adventures, Twain alludes to and develops themes from the Western literary canon, illustrating the Greco-Roman influence on the American heritage.

Huck’s Moral Crisis: Huckleberry Finn Part 4

Unlike the typical dramatic climax found in many works of great literature, the climax of Huckleberry Finn is a moral one. Huck must confront the question of Jim’s humanity. Is Jim merely property, as the laws of society dictate, or is he a human being equal to every other, as Huck’s experience with him on the Mississippi had shown?

“She’s Going to Adopt Me and Sivilize Me and I Can’t Stand It”: Huckleberry Finn Part 5

Huckleberry Finn  ends with Huck leaving civilization and lighting out for the West. Of the ending, T.S. Eliot wrote, “I do not think that any book ever written ends more certainly with the right words.” Huck concludes the novel, saying, “But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me and I can’t stand it. I been there before.”

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The Greatest Music Stars To Ever Play Las Vegas

Some of the industry’s biggest names have graced the stage in Sin City.

Las Vegas is known as a hot spot for many things: gambling, partying, and, of course, live music. Almost all of the greatest musicians of all time have played in Las Vegas at least once during their careers. Some have even called Vegas their home during residencies at fabulous locations where they have performed for fans for weeks or months at a time. The city is full of music history, and even now there’s no shortage of opportunity to see some great shows if you visit Vegas.

Iconic venues like House of Blues, Stoneys Rockin Country, the arena at MGM Grand, and the T-Mobile Arena are great places to be to see some truly excellent live music, but they’re not the only spots. For years, the strip has been where so many music artists want to be. Here’s a look at some of the best artists to bring their talents to Las Vegas.

Elvis Presley

Las Vegas and Elvis nearly go hand in hand , so of course the King gets a spot on this list. Presley made his first Vegas appearance in 1956, and although he wasn’t a huge hit there right away, he eventually became a staple in the city. A 4-week residency in Vegas years later helped revive his career in 1969, and today, you can see remnants of his legacy everywhere there.

Related: How the King Made Sin City His Home

It’s hard to talk about Las Vegas’ music scene without mentioning Liberace . The pianist was a very popular performer in the 1950s and ’60s, and after performing in Vegas a few times, he quickly became one of the most popular and highest-paid stars in the city.

Frank Sinatra

Frank Sinatra is an iconic figure in the music industry and equally multitalented with a prestigious filmography to boot. Sinatra also had a huge impact on the music scene in Las Vegas, after making his debut at the Desert Inn in 1951 in the face of a career downturn. Spend part of your Vegas trip following in Sinatra’s footsteps at his favorite spots, like Champagne’s Cafe or the Golden Steer Steakhouse .

Celine Dion

Canadian singer Celine Dion is known for her powerful vocals and her pop music hits. She has also been a Las Vegas mainstay, with two residencies under her belt. Her first residency, which was titled A New Day... and performed at The Colosseum at Caesar’s Palace from 2003 to 2007, is still the most successful Vegas residency in history. Her second residency, called Celine, stretched from 2011 to 2019, to a positive reception from critics and fans yet again. The star was supposed to start a third in 2021 but had to postpone due to health issues .

Donny & Marie Osmond

Brother-sister duo Donny and Marie Osmond brought their act to Las Vegas in 2007 after years of their solo careers. Their show was so successful that it went on to run for 11 years, ending in 2019 with a total of nearly 2,000 shows. They left such an impression that the Flamingo Hotel’s showroom, where they sang, was renamed the Donny and Marie Theater.

The legendary Elton John brings energy to every show he does, so of course he was a hit in high-energy Las Vegas as well. Throughout his career, John has performed in Sin City more than 400 times . He had two residencies there at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace, one from 2004 to 2009 and the second from 2011 until 2018.

Britney Spears

Some have credited Britney Spears as the musician who changed up the music scene in Las Vegas , making it more popular for of-the-moment musicians again rather than just old favorites whose careers were fading away. The ’90s pop superstar launched her residency there in 2013, which ran for four years and was incredibly successful, a trailblazing moment in her already-stellar career.

Unlike other musicians, Prince never had a lengthy residency in Las Vegas. Still, the iconic performer’s brief time there made its mark and is still very notable. In November 2006, Prince opened up a nightclub in Sin City called 3121 at the Rio All Suite Hotel and Casino. There, he performed every week on Friday and Saturday nights through April 2007.

Mariah Carey

Mariah Carey is known for her pop ballads, incredible voice with an enchanting whistle register, and has called Vegas her home multiple times. Her first residency took place at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace and ran from May 2015 until July 2017. She returned to the same venue a year later to do a second residency from July 2018 through February 2020. Both proved to be successful enough for Carey to announce a third residency kicking off in April 2024.

Barry Manilow

Barry Manilow is no stranger to Las Vegas—some call him the King of Sin City over artists like Elvis or Frank Sinatra. Manilow has been performing in Vegas regularly since 1975 when he had his first show at the then-Hilton. He has had several residencies in Vegas and has been playing at the Westgate Resort for more than 14 years, beating a record for most shows at the iconic location which was previously held by Elvis.

Shania Twain

The best-selling female country music artist of all time, Shania Twain is a trailblazer for other female musicians. Along with some well-received tours, the Canadian singer has left her mark on Vegas as well. Twain’s first residency ran from December 2012 until the end of 2014, and her second began in 2019 and ended in 2021. Her third Vegas residency, called Come on Over, opens in May 2024.

Jennifer Lopez

Jennifer Lopez ’s decades-spanning career has seen her on all sorts of stages and screens. It was no surprise that, in January 2016, she started a Las Vegas residency that ran for about two years. It quickly became one of the highest-grossing Vegas residencies of all time and was the top residency for a Latin artist. She’s set to return to Sin City in 2024 for a stop on her This is Me...Now tour.

Wayne Newton

Wayne Newton is another extremely popular singer—and he’s also known as one of the biggest entertainers in Vegas, with nicknames like Mr. Las Vegas to cement his legacy. He first performed in Sin City in the late 1950s and ended up becoming one of the most popular performers there. He is the highest-grossing entertainer in Las Vegas history and calls Caesar’s Palace home.

Cher is an American icon: a talented singer, actor, and television personality who is also known for her elaborate performances, especially in Las Vegas. Dancers, glitz, and over-the-top costumes make her shows fun and exciting, even by Vegas standards. She has performed there hundreds of times and has completed three residencies with a fourth on the way in 2024.

Barbra Streisand

As a singer, songwriter, actor, and director, Barbra Streisand has one of the most recognizable names, faces, and voices in Hollywood. She has never headlined a Las Vegas residency, though she has performed all over the Strip throughout her very long career. She had a friendship with Liberace, who requested Streisand as the opening act for his residency at the Riviera and thus granted the star her Vegas debut.

Lady Gaga made an impression on the music industry and pop culture as a whole from the moment she emerged. Her residency in Vegas opened in December 2018 at the Park Theater at Park MGM and ended in October 2023 after a long hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Gaga unsurprisingly went for over-the-top performances featuring elaborate costumes, storytelling, and plenty of glitz and glamour.

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The Autobiography of Mark Twain: The Complete and Authoritative Edition Kindle Edition

• Book 1 of 3 Autobiography of Mark Twain Series
• Print length 365 pages
• Language English
• Sticky notes On Kindle Scribe
• Publisher Revelation Press
• Publication date February 21, 2023
• File size 566 KB
• Page Flip Enabled
• Word Wise Enabled
• Enhanced typesetting Enabled
• See all details

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• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0BWWDZLTB
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Revelation Press (February 21, 2023)
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ February 21, 2023
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• File size ‏ : ‎ 566 KB
• Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
• Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
• Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 365 pages
• #114 in Biographies of Business Professionals
• #577 in Biographies of Business & Industrial Professionals
• #1,288 in Humor (Kindle Store)

About the authors

Mark Twain is the pseudonym of Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835 - 1910). He was born and brought up in the American state of Missouri and, because of his father's death, he left school to earn his living when he was only twelve. He was a great adventurer and travelled round America as a printer; prospected for gold and set off for South America to earn his fortune. He returned to become a steam-boat pilot on the Mississippi River, close to where he had grown up. The Civil War put an end to steam-boating and Clemens briefly joined the Confederate army - although the rest of his family were Unionists! He had already tried his hand at newspaper reporting and now became a successful journalist. He started to use the alias Mark Twain during the Civil War and it was under this pen name that he became a famous travel writer. He took the name from his steam-boat days - it was the river pilots' cry to let their men know that the water was two fathoms deep.

Mark Twain was always nostalgic about his childhood and in 1876 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was published, based on his own experiences. The book was soon recognised as a work of genius and eight years later the sequel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, was published. The great writer Ernest Hemingway claimed that 'All modern literature stems from this one book.'

Mark Twain was soon famous all over the world. He made a fortune from writing and lost it on a typesetter he invented. He then made another fortune and lost it on a bad investment. He was an impulsive, hot-tempered man but was also quite sentimental and superstitious. He was born when Halley's Comet was passing the Earth and always believed he would die when it returned - this is exactly what happened.

Victor Fischer

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Benjamin Griffin

Benjamin Griffin, an expert on the life and writings of Mark Twain, has been creating scholarly editions of the great author’s works for almost twenty years. He is an editor at the Mark Twain Project, a research unit of The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. Ben studied English literature at UC Berkeley, St. Andrews University, and Cambridge University (PhD); he also studied guitar under Joe Satriani. He has been a lecturer in English at UCLA and UC Berkeley, as well as a bookseller and rare books cataloger. His editorial credits include the three volumes of Mark Twain’s Autobiography; A Family Sketch and Other Private Writings; Mark Twain’s Civil War. His latest publication is a groundbreaking critical edition of Pudd’nhead Wilson (April 2024), which gives three forms of the text, painstakingly reconstructed from original manuscripts and typescripts.

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Customers say

Customers find the reading experience deeply rewarding and easy to read in bed. They also find the story fascinating and paint a wonderful picture of his time. Readers describe the structure as very informative, interesting, and humorous. However, some find the print size very small and the book not easy to use on a Kindle. They disagree on the enjoyability, with some finding it incredibly enjoyable and others saying it's boring. Reader opinions also differ on the writing style, with others finding it candid and loosely organized, while others say it'd be better if it was more structured.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

Customers find the book deeply rewarding, refreshing, and worth it. They appreciate the great writing and short story telling. Readers also mention that the 250-page Introduction was wonderful. They say the electronic book is convenient to resume reading where they left off.

"...This scene alone makes the book worth the price of admission ...." Read more

"...If you’re a fan of Mark Twain these books are totally worth it ." Read more

"...I find this work almost overwhelming. Well worth looking at . . . . Clearly a major work." Read more

"...With the electronic book, it is convenient to resume reading where I left off earlier...." Read more

Customers find the story fascinating, marvelous, and movingly serious. They also say the writing is hypnotizing, full of historical information, and descriptive. Customers also say it's the book of the century, complex, engaging, and full of Twain.

"...He is extremely sharp and funny. His descriptive abilities are unsurpassed ...." Read more

"...Also his discussions about mining in Nevada is eye opening and very interesting .The book isn't in chronological order...." Read more

"...However, it must be said that this does add some interest to the book -..." Read more

"...The print is tiny and it’s an enormous book! Additionally it’s poorly organized . This “autobiography” has notes about Twains autobiography...." Read more

Customers find the structure of the book very informative, interesting, and humorous. They also say it's a marvelous work of extensive scholarship, and the scholarly editing is masterful. Readers also mention that Gardner is exceptional and convincing as Twain.

"...1 is an exceptionally well-researched and scholarly work . It contains much unpublished material by Twain as well as previously published material...." Read more

"...This is not a man-book. It contains much information of interest to those who enjoy Twain's wisdom and to those who enjoy history...." Read more

"...That misses the point; the scholarly editing is masterful ...." Read more

"...I'm reading this on a Kindle, and the table of contents is no help because it simply labels the middle chunk of the book at "The Autobiography of..." Read more

Customers find the humor in the book indignant, humanity, and wit. They also say the writings of Twain are excellent.

"...He is acerbic and funny and, I’m sure if we actually knew the people he talks about, dead on accurate...." Read more

"...Twain comes across as cantankerous, humorous , politically savvy. . . . Early on, he makes comments about slavery...." Read more

"...He's also witty , twinkling, and ironic, as well as movingly serious (as when talking about the death of his daughter at age 24)...." Read more

"...What hilarious story telling , fierce opinions, indignation, humanity and wit...." Read more

Customers are mixed about the enjoyability of the book. Some mention it's incredibly enjoyable and provides an incredible insight into the life of Samuel Clemons. Others say it'll be humorous at times but boring and dull about people.

"...I found this to be the most boring and the most badly written of Twain's books. Very useful..." Read more

"...’s autobiography and, while it was a monumental task, it was incredibly enjoyable . It really was like getting to sit and listen to the man talk...." Read more

"...It's the sheer dullness of his story telling that makes this volume so difficult to get through ... especially when you expect so much of America's..." Read more

"... Tons of not very interesting asides that have little to do with what I thought I was buying...." Read more

Customers are mixed about the writing style. Some find the thoughts clear and expressed conversationally, while others say the introduction is over the top and much too long. They also say the early material is tedious and boring. Overall, some customers say the book is loosely organized collection of rough drafts, unfinished sketches, false starts, and notes.

"...His thoughts are clear and expressed conversationally and appear to come to the forefront almost as if he were speaking privately with a friend...." Read more

"...If it has a shortfall it's that the book starts off so incredibly academic , to the extent that it might be best enjoyed by first searching out Twain..." Read more

"...What's it like, once you get to "the good stuff"? Overall, lots of rambling ..." Read more

"...The easy-rambling , humorous style of narration makes it feel as though Twain is sitting beside you telling you all the things you never knew about..." Read more

Customers find the print size of the book very small, making it hard to read. They also say the book is too big to hold comfortably, and is over 750 pages long. Customers also mention that the notes by the editor are almost useless on a Kindle, and impossible to use on Kindle.

"...The print is very small , and the volume is so heavy that holding it is uncomfortable for long periods at a time...." Read more

"...Finally, the format is very hard to read - the book is too big to hold comfortable ,..." Read more

"...First, this autobiography is an oversize hardbook which means it may not fit into a bookshelf with other more traditional hardbooks...." Read more

"This is a heavy volume, a relatively large book with fine print ...." Read more

Customers find the book difficult to read and find it rambling and disjointed. They also say the editors are pretentious, bombastic, and erudite.

"...Like many scholarly books, it is large, heavy, and somewhat intimidating to the average reader ...." Read more

"...did, various society dinners,etc. Finally, the format is very hard to read - the book is too big to hold comfortable,..." Read more

"...The Twain that comes through in this book is a boring, rambling , egotistical name-dropper...." Read more

"...Third, this edition is a rambling text with no chronological sequence . Mark Twain told stories as he remembered as they came to his memory...." Read more

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