"Mark Twain's autobiography is a classic of American letters, to be ranked with the autobiographies of Benjamin Franklin and Henry Adams ... It has the marks of greatness in it--style, scope, imagination, laughter, tragedy."--The Introduction by Charles Neider Mark Twain was a figure larger than life: massive in talent, eruptive in temperament, unpredictable in his actions. He crafted stories of heroism, adventure, tragedy, and comedy that reflected...

Throughout America's Gilded Age, humorist and novelist Samuel Clemens, a. k. a. Mark Twain (1835-1910), was in great demand as a public speaker. This anthology, spanning the years from 1866 to 1909, collects 82 examples of Twain's best "spoken" work. Topics include American mythmaking, the Hawaiian Islands, masturbation, the art of war, New York morals, and stage fright.

Spanning Samuel Clemens's adult life -- from his eighteenth year until his death at seventy-four -- these marvelous letters provide an incomparable purview of their author's psyche and genius. They also serve as a second and even more intimate autobiography as we follow his career from typesetter to riverboat pilot, frontier miner, newspaper correspondent, world traveler, and eminently successful lecturer and author. There are also revealing insights...

In 1873, Mark Twain wrote, with the collaboration of Charles Dudley Warner, his first novel, The Gilded Age. It was Twain who created the basic plot and characterization, and Twain who wrote major portions of the book - which he later clearly identified as his own. Despite its being a best seller in its day, the book has received little attention in recent years, and one of Twain's most memorable characters has been almost forgotten. Now, by using...

A biography of Twain written by his daughter Susy when she was thirteen and he was fifty. Includes correspondence between the two.