Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1

September 7, 2015
This third and final volume of Twain's half-million-word autobiography begins with an amusing reminiscence about a rascally jewelry salesman, dictated in 1907, and ends with a wail of anguish over the tragic death of his daughter, Jean, in 1909. In between, there occur all manner of engrossing events and experiences, including Twain's receipt of an honorary degree from Oxford University, employment of a man masquerading as a housemaid, luncheon with George Bernard Shaw, travels abroad to England and Bermuda, and audiences with Andrew Carnegie and other famous personalities of the day. Twain recalls his twilight years' main events in roughly chronological order, but each serves as a touchstone for digressions and reveries on experiences described in his autobiography's two earlier volumes. Twain's expansiveness occasionally deflates into numbing levels of detail, but he is usually as sharp and witty here as he in his fiction, particularly when gleefully goring his favorite bête noir, President Theodore Roosevelt. Life, in Twain's opinion, is a "procession of episodes and experiences which seem large when they happen, but which diminish to trivialities as soon as we get perspective upon them." This fascinating volume gives lie to that assertion, and closes the book on the remarkable life of one of America's most outstanding literary talents. With extensive scholarly annotations. B+w photos.

March 15, 2011

This first of three volumes of Twain's (1835-1910) autobiography, published as part of the Mark Twain Project, blows away all previous editions, including that edited by Charles Neider in 1959, which is also available from Blackstone Audio. For the first time, all of Twain's words appear in full, arranged exactly as he composed them and intended them to be published, per his instruction, on the centenary of his death. Veteran narrator Grover Gardner adeptly presents the material; his delivery of the German tongue-twisters in particular are a treat. Yet, though the book might seem a perfect fit for audio, especially since Twain dictated much of it, some listeners may be put off to discover that the editorial front matter fills up nearly two discs. And while editor Smith's excellent introduction will fascinate scholars and serious Twain buffs, it may leave others impatient to get to Twain's own texts--with no idea of exactly when that will happen, as the contents of each disc are not labeled. Most valuable as a supplement to the print material. [See Major Audio Releases, LJ 10/15/10; the LJ and New York Times best-selling Univ. of California Pr. hc received a starred review, LJ 9/15/10.--Ed.]--R. Kent Rasmussen, Thousand Oaks, CA

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from September 27, 2010
Mark Twain is his own greatest character in this brilliant self-portrait, the first of three volumes collected by the Mark Twain Project on the centenary of the author's death. It is published complete and unexpurgated for the first time. (Twain wanted his more scalding opinions suppressed until long after his death.) Eschewing chronology and organization, Twain simply meanders from observation to anecdote and between past and present. There are gorgeous reminiscences from his youth of landscapes, rural idylls, and Tom Sawyeresque japes; acid-etched profiles of friends and enemies, from his "fiendish" Florentine landlady to the fatuous and "grotesque" Rockefellers; a searing polemic on a 1906 American massacre of Filipino insurgents; a hilarious screed against a hapless editor who dared tweak his prose; and countless tales of the author's own bamboozlement, unto bankruptcy, by publishers, business partners, doctors, miscellaneous moochers; he was even outsmarted by a wild turkey. 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. His is a world where every piety conceals fraud and every arcadia a trace of violence; he relishes the human comedy and reveres true nobility, yet as he tolls the bell for friends and family—most tenderly in an elegy for his daughter Susy, who died in her early 20s of meningitis—he feels that life is a pointless charade. Twain's memoirs are a pointillist masterpiece from which his vision of America—half paradise, half swindle—emerges with indelible force. 66 photos and line illus.