Amazingly, the Autobiography of Mark Twain, completed and arranged as he intended it, has never been published. Books by that name, yes - but expurgated, shortened, rearranged by editors who thought they knew better. He forbade full publication until 100 years after his death, which is this year.
In November, after six years of labor by a team of experts on four very full file cabinet drawers of papers and files, the 760-page first volume of the complete Autobiography of Mark Twain will be published by the University of California Press. Within five years, two more volumes will appear, and the entire work, with variants and notes, will be available online. Though about 90 percent of the first volume has seen the light here and there, more than half of the entire thing is previously unpublished.
In Volume 1, a reminiscence of 1853-54 reads: "By and by I went to Philadelphia and worked there some months as a 'sub' on the Inquirer . . . ." Highlights in coming volumes include his trip to Oxford University for an honorary degree, thoughts on palm-reading, and (originally suppressed) diatribes against religion.
It's the never-seen last major work of perhaps our most famous writer, a platinum opportunity to accompany his mind as it takes the grand tour, the ultimate interior monologue.
Robert Hirst, general editor of the Bancroft Library's Mark Twain Papers and Project at Berkeley, says, "The thrill of seeing the entire work, as he intended it to be, is extraordinary." Harriet Elinor Smith, principal editor of Volume 1, says that although she doesn't want to oversell its literary merits, the Autobiography is "rewarding, something really different."
