Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 1 Read Online

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

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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.

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

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.

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.