by Mark Twain
THE MARK TWAIN PAPERS
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARK TWAIN
VOLUME 1
The Mark Twain Project is an editorial and publishing program of The Bancroft Library, working since 1967 to create a comprehensive critical edition of everything Mark Twain wrote.
This volume is the first one in that edition to be published simultaneously in print and as an electronic text at http://www.marktwainproject.org. The textual commentaries for all Mark Twain texts in this volume are published only there.
THE MARK TWAIN PAPERS
Robert H. Hirst, General Editor
Board of Directors of the Mark Twain Project
Jo Ann Boydston
Laura Cerruti
Don L. Cook
Frederick Crews
Charles B. Faulhaber
Peter E. Hanff
Thomas C. Leonard
Michael Millgate
George A. Starr
G. Thomas Tanselle
Lynne Withey
Contributing Editors for This Volume
Natalia Cecire
Michelle Coleman
George Derk
Christine Hong
Rachel Perez
Leslie Walton
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF
MARK
TWAIN
VOLUME 1
HARRIET ELINOR SMITH, EDITOR
Associate Editors
Benjamin Griffin
Victor Fischer
Michael B. Frank
Sharon K. Goetz
Leslie Diane Myrick
A publication of the Mark Twain Project
of The Bancroft Library
Frontispiece: Photograph by Albert Bigelow Paine, 25 June 1906, Upton House, Dublin, New Hampshire
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University of California Press
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University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England
Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1 Copyright© 2010, 2001 by the Mark Twain Foundation. All Rights Reserved. Transcription, reconstruction, and creation of the texts, introduction, notes, and appendixes Copyright© 2010 by The Regents of the University of California. The Mark Twain Foundation expressly reserves to itself, its successors and assigns, all dramatization rights in every medium, including without limitation, stage, radio, television, motion picture, and public reading rights, in and to the Autobiography of Mark Twain and all other texts by Mark Twain in copyright to the Mark Twain Foundation.
All texts by Mark Twain in Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1 have been published previously, by permission of the Mark Twain Foundation, in the Mark Twain Project’s Microfilm Edition of Mark Twain’s Literary Manuscripts Available in the Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California Berkeley (Berkeley: The Bancroft Library, 2001), and some texts have been published previously in one or more of the following: Albert Bigelow Paine, editor, Mark Twain’s Autobiography (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1924); Bernard DeVoto, editor, Mark Twain in Eruption (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1940); Charles Neider, editor, The Autobiography of Mark Twain, Including Chapters Now Published for the First Time (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1959). Unless otherwise noted, all illustrations are reproduced from original documents in the Mark Twain Papers of The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
MARK TWAIN PROJECT® is a registered trademark of The Regents of the University of California in the United States and the European Community.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Twain, Mark, 1835–1910
[Autobiography]
Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1 / editor: Harriet Elinor Smith;
associate editors: Benjamin Griffin, Victor Fischer, Michael B. Frank, Sharon K. Goetz, Leslie Diane Myrick
p. cm. — (The Mark Twain Papers)
“A publication of the Mark Twain Project of The Bancroft Library.”
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-520-26719-0 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Twain, Mark, 1835–1910. 2. Authors, American—19th century—Biography. I. Smith, Harriet Elinor. II. Griffin, Benjamin, 1968– III. Fischer, Victor, 1942– IV. Frank, Michael B. V. Goetz, Sharon K. VI. Myrick, Leslie Diane. VII. Bancroft Library. VIII. Title.
PS1331.A2 2010
818’.4’0924—dc22 2009047700
Manufactured in the United States of America
19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is printed on Natures Book, which contains 50% post-consumer waste and meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO z39.48–1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper).
Editorial work for this volume has been supported by a generous gift to the Mark Twain Project of The Bancroft Library from the
KORET FOUNDATION
and by matching and outright grants from the
NATIONAL ENDOWMENT
FOR THE HUMANITIES,
an independent federal agency.
Without that support, this volume could not
have been produced.
The Mark Twain Project at the University of California, Berkeley, gratefully acknowledges generous support from the following, for editorial work on the Autobiography of Mark Twain and for the acquisition of important new documents:
The University of California, Berkeley, Class of 1958
Members of the Mark Twain Luncheon Club
The Barkley Fund
The Mark Twain Foundation
The Beatrice Fox Auerbach Foundation Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving
Lawrence E. Brooks
Helen Kennedy Cahill
Kimo Campbell
Virginia Robinson Furth
The Herrick Fund
The Hofmann Foundation
The House of Bernstein, Inc.
Robert and Beverly Middlekauff
The Renee B. Fisher Foundation
The Benjamin and Susan Shapell Foundation
Jeanne and Leonard Ware
Patricia Wright, in memory of Timothy J. Fitzgerald
and
The thousands of individual donors over the past fifty years
who have helped sustain the ongoing work
of the Mark Twain Project.
The publication of this volume has been made possible by a gift to the University of California Press Foundation by
WILSON GARDNER COMBS
FRANK MARION GIFFORD COMBS
in honor of
WILSON GIFFORD COMBS
BA 1935, MA 1950, University of California, Berkeley
MARYANNA GARDNER COMBS
MSW 1951, University of California, Berkeley
University of California Press gratefully acknowledges the support of
John G. Davies
and the Humanities Endowment Fund of the UC Press Foundation
CONTENTS
List of Manuscripts and Dictations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Preliminary Manuscripts and Dictations, 1870–1905
/> AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARK TWAIN
Explanatory Notes
Appendixes
Samuel L. Clemens: A Brief Chronology
Family Biographies
Speech at the Seventieth Birthday Dinner, 5 December 1905
Speech at The Players, 3 January 1906
Previous Publication
Note on the Text
Word Division in This Volume
References
Index
Photographs
LIST OF MANUSCRIPTS
AND DICTATIONS
Preliminary Manuscripts and Dictations, 1870–1905
1870
[The Tennessee Land]
1877
[Early Years in Florida, Missouri]
1885
The Grant Dictations
The Chicago G.A.R. Festival
[A Call with W. D. Howells on General Grant]
Grant and the Chinese
Gerhardt
About General Grant’s Memoirs
[The Rev. Dr. Newman]
1890, 1893–94
The Machine Episode
1897
Travel-Scraps I
1898
Four Sketches about Vienna
[Beauties of the German Language]
[Comment on Tautology and Grammar]
[A Group of Servants]
[A Viennese Procession]
1898
My Debut as a Literary Person
1898–99
Horace Greeley
1898–99
Lecture-Times
1898–99
Ralph Keeler
1900
Scraps from My Autobiography. From Chapter IX
1900
Scraps from My Autobiography. Private History of a Manuscript That Came to Grief
1903
[Reflections on a Letter and a Book]
1903
[Something about Doctors]
1904
[Henry H. Rogers]
1905
[Anecdote of Jean]
Except for the subtitle “Random Extracts from It” (which Clemens himself enclosed in brackets), bracketed titles have been editorially supplied for works that Clemens left untitled.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARK TWAIN
1906
An Early Attempt
1897–98
My Autobiography [Random Extracts from It]
1906
The Latest Attempt
1906
The Final (and Right) Plan
1906
Preface. As from the Grave
1904
The Florentine Dictations
[John Hay]
Notes on “Innocents Abroad”
[Robert Louis Stevenson and Thomas Bailey Aldrich]
[Villa di Quarto]
1906
Autobiographical Dictations, January–March
9 January
7 February
8 March
10 January
8 February
9 March
11 January
9 February
12 March
12 January
12 February
14 March
13 January
13 February
15 March
15 January
14 February
16 March
16 January
15 February
20 March
17 January
16 February
21 March
18 January
20 February
22 March
19 January
21 February
23 March
23 January
22 February
26 March
24 January
23 February
27 March
1 February
26 February
28 March
2 February
5 March
29 March
5 February
6 March
30 March
6 February
7 March
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Intensive editorial work on the Autobiography of Mark Twain began some six years ago and will continue for several more years. But the collective skills and expertise that have allowed us to solve the daunting problems posed by this manuscript came gradually into existence over four decades of editorial work on Mark Twain. We therefore thank the National Endowment for the Humanities, an independent federal agency, both for its three most recent outright and matching grants over the last six years, and for its patient, generous, and uninterrupted support of the Mark Twain Project since 1966. At the same time and with the same fervor, we thank the Koret Foundation for its recent generous grant in support of editorial and production work on the Autobiography, all of which has gone (or will go) to satisfy the matching component of the Endowment’s recent grants to the Project.
For additional continuing support of work on the Autobiography and for help in acquiring important original documents for the Mark Twain Papers, we thank those institutions and individuals listed on page ix. The Mark Twain Project has been sustained over the years in so many ways by so many people that we are obliged, with regret, to thank them as one large group rather than by individual names. For donations to sustain our work, ranging from five dollars to five million dollars, we here thank all our loyal and generous supporters. Without their support, the Project would long ago have ceased to exist, and would certainly not be completing work on the Autobiography at this time.
Recent efforts have been made to create an endowment to support the present and future work of the Mark Twain Project, and we want to acknowledge those efforts here. First and foremost we thank all the members of the University of California, Berkeley, Class of 1958, led by Roger and Jeane Samuelsen, Edward H. Peterson, and Don and Bitsy Kosovac, who recently created an endowment of $1 million dedicated to the Mark Twain Project. We thank each and every member of the Class for their far-seeing wisdom and generosity. To that endowment fund we may now add, with renewed gratitude, contributions from the estate of Phyllis R. Bogue and the estate of Peter K. Oppenheim.
Instrumental in all recent fund-raising for the Project has been the Mark Twain Luncheon Club, organized ten years ago by Ira Michael Heyman, Watson M. (Mac) Laetsch, and Robert Middlekauff. Their leadership has been unflagging and indispensable, and we thank them for it and for a thousand other forms of help. We also thank all of the Club’s nearly one hundred members for their loyal financial and moral support of the Project, and on their behalf we extend thanks to the several dozen speakers who have agreed to address the Luncheon Club members over the years. Our thanks also go to Dave Duer, director of development in the Berkeley University Library, for his continuing wise and judicious counsel, and for his unprecedented efforts to raise financial support for the Project. Last but not least we want to thank the Berkeley campus as a whole for granting the Project relief from indirect costs on its several grants from the Endowment. We are grateful for this and all other forms of support from our home institution.
We thank the staff of the University Library and The Bancroft Library at Berkeley, especially Thomas C. Leonard, University Librarian; Charles Faulhaber, the James D. Hart Director of The Bancroft Library; and Peter E. Hanff, its Deputy Director, all of whom serve on the Board of Directors of the Mark Twain Project. To them and to the other members of the Board—Jo Ann Boydston, Laura Cerruti, Don L. Cook, Frederick Crews, Michael Millgate, George A. Starr, G. Thomas Tanselle, and Lynne Withey—we are indebted for multiple forms of moral and intellectual support.