William H Pritchard
Diary Of A Somebody
Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume I
By Harriet Elinor Smith
University of California Press 736pp £24.95
Here is the first volume of Mark Twain’s autobiography, ‘complete, authoritative, and uncensored’, we are assured. To compile this first of three projected volumes, Harriet Elinor Smith and her assistants have gone through a ten-foot stack of files consisting of 5,000 manuscript papers containing half a million words from dictations Twain gave over a number of years. He died in 1910 with the notion that 100 years later, when he decreed that the autobiography should appear, he would be able to publish freely, at length and with full candour his thoughts about anything under the sun.
The book weighs in at five pounds. After an introduction, there are about 200 pages of ‘Preliminary Manuscripts and Dictations’, ranging from 1870 to 1905. There are 264 pages of autobiography, followed by explanatory notes that take up another 200 pages. Various appendices, notes on the text and
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
When @djbduncan notices the text for a literary jigsaw puzzle had been written by a former colleague, his head spins. A wild surmise. Are jigsaws REF-able?
Dennis Duncan - The W Factor
Dennis Duncan: The W Factor
literaryreview.co.uk
In an effort to scold drinkers, Victorian temperance societies furiously marked every drinking establishment with a red X on city maps. It was a spectacular case of propaganda backfiring.
@foxtosser explores the history of drink maps
Edward Brooke-Hitching - From Beer Street to Gin Lane
Edward Brooke-Hitching: From Beer Street to Gin Lane - Drink Maps in Victorian Britain by Kris Butler
literaryreview.co.uk
How did a workers’ insurance agent who died of tuberculosis at the age of forty become a global literary icon?
@MortenHoiJensen on Kafka's metamorphosis
Morten Høi Jensen - Paranoid Humanoid
Morten Høi Jensen: Paranoid Humanoid - Metamorphoses: In Search of Franz Kafka by Karolina Watroba; Kafka: Making o...
literaryreview.co.uk