Autobiography of mark twain review
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About the Book
The year 2010 marked the 100th anniversary of Mark Twain’s death. In celebration of this important milestone and in honor of the cherished tradition of publishing Mark Twain’s works, UC Press published Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1, the first of a three-volume edition of the complete, uncensored autobiography. The book became an immediate bestseller and was hailed as the capstone of the life’s work of America’s favorite author.
This Reader’s Edition, a portable paperback in larger type, republishes the text of the hardcover Autobiography in a form that is convenient for the general reader, without the editorial explanatory notes. It includes a brief introduction describing the evolution of Mark Twain’s ideas about writing his autobiography, as well as a chronology of his life, and brief family biographies.
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
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Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1: The Complete and Authoritative Edition
Autobiography of Mark Twain READER'S EDITION Now Available! Half the Size, All the Twain! ISBN 978052027255 "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 The strict instruction that many of these texts remain unpublished for 100 years meant that when they came out, he would be "dead, and unaware, and indifferent," and that he was therefore free to speak his "whole frank mind."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
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Mark Twain's Latest Autobiography
It may seem odd that a literary scholar and biographer such as myself should review a scholarly edition that has been on the New York Times best-seller list for nearly three months. The last time I looked, volume one of Autobiography of Mark Twain (edited by Harriet Elinor Smith of the Mark Twain Project at the University of California, Berkeley) was holding its own at number five on the list, just ahead of another comedian’s take on the human race, Jon Stewart’s Earth (The Book). Usually, these robust annotated editions are priced around $100 and have a print run of 1,500 or less. This one published by the University of California Press is priced to sell at $34.95, for which the buyer gets 760 pages of relatively small print (at least for a best-seller). And from what I’ve heard, the publisher had originally planned to print only 7,500, but has now sold hundreds of thousands of copies since its issue on November 15, Mark Twain’s 175th birthday. Such books are usually reviewed in scholarly journals at least a year o
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