Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2 Read Online
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The publication of this volume has been made possible by a gift to the University of California Press Foundation by WILSON GARDNER COMBS in honor of WILSON GIFFORD COMBS MARYANNA GARDNER COMBS |
The University of California Press gratefully acknowledges the support of
The Mark Twain Foundation
The Sydney Stern Memorial Trust
John G. Davies
and the Humanities Endowment Fund of the UC Press Foundation
CONTENTS
LIST OF DICTATIONS
1906 Autobiographical Dictations, April–December
1907 Autobiographical Dictations, January–February
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Editorial work on the Autobiography of Mark Twain began some eight years ago and is expected to continue for another two. But acquiring the collective skills, expertise, and materials that allow us to do the work has taken much longer: more than four decades of editorial labor on every aspect of Mark Twain’s writings, made possible by the continuous support, since 1967, of the National Endowment for the Humanities, an independent federal agency. We thank the Endowment for that long-standing, patient, and generous support, of which its two most recent outright and matching grants are but a small part. With equal 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.
For their 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 in the subvention. The Mark Twain Project has been sustained over the years in so many ways by so many people that we are obliged to thank them as one large group, much as we would prefer to name every individual and institution who has contributed. Much of the Endowment’s recent support of the Mark Twain Project has been in the form of funds matching the generous gifts of individuals and foundations. For donations ranging from five dollars to five million dollars, we thank all our loyal and generous supporters. Without their donations, the Project would long ago have ceased to exist, and would certainly not be producing the Autobiography edition today.
That said, we must nevertheless single out for special thanks a heroic undertaking to create an endowment supporting the present and future work of the Mark Twain Project by the alumni of the University of California, Berkeley, Class of 1958, led by Roger and Jeane Samuelsen, Edward H. Peterson, and Don and Bitsy Kosovac. In 2008, as a fiftieth reunion gift to the University, the Class endowed the Mark Twain Project with a dedicated fund of $1 million. We renew our thanks to each and every member of the Class for their unprecedented generosity. And we also acknowledge here the creation of two smaller endowment funds in support of the Project by the estates of Phyllis R. Bogue and Peter K. Oppenheim. These efforts to create long-term private support for the Project have fundamentally altered the way we pay for this work.
Central to all our recent fundraising efforts has been the Mark Twain Luncheon Club, organized twelve years ago by Watson M. (Mac) Laetsch, Robert Middlekauff, and the late Ira Michael Heyman, three of the wisest administrators ever to help manage the Berkeley campus. The leadership of the Club has been unflagging and indispensable; we thank them for it and for a thousand other forms of help. The Club now has a newsletter, produced for us by Ron Kolb and Pamela Patterson, who have our continuing thanks. We also thank 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 dozens of visiting speakers who have addressed the Luncheon Club members over the years. Thanks also to David Duer, the director of development in the Berkeley University Library, for his always wise and judicious counsel, and for his heroic labors in raising financial support for the Project.
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