A beautiful hardcover repackaging of this timeless classic from the publishers of the Autobiography of Mark Twain and in partnership with the Mark Twain Project. This definitive edition of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was the only version of Mark Twain's masterpiece based on his complete manuscript, including the 663 pages found in a Los Angeles attic in 1990. Prepared by the Mark Twain Papers, the official archive of Sam Clemens's papers at the University of California, Berkeley, this volume features the gorgeous original illustrations that Twain commissioned from Edward Windsor Kemble and John Harley and also includes historical notes, a glossary, maps, selected manuscript pages, and even a gallery of letters, advertisements, and playbills from Twain's first "book tour" to promote the original publication-everything the discerning reader needs to enjoy this classic of American literature again and again.

This 125th anniversary edition of "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" is expanded with thoroughly updated notes and references, and a selection of original documents--letters, advertisements, playbills--some never before published, from Twain's first book tour.

Mark Twain's humorous account of his six years in Nevada, San Francisco, and the Sandwich Islands is a patchwork of personal anecdotes and tall tales, many of them told in the "vigorous new vernacular" of the West. Selling seventy five thousand copies within a year of its publication in 1872, "Roughing It "was greeted as a work of "wild, preposterous invention and sublime exaggeration" whose satiric humor made "pretension and false dignity ridiculous." Meticulously restored from a variety of original sources, the text is the first to adhere to the author's wishes in thousands of details of wording, spelling, and punctuation, and includes all of the 304 first-edition illustrations. With its comprehensive and illuminating notes and supplementary materials, which include detailed maps tracing Mark Twain's western travels, this Mark Twain Library "Roughing It "must be considered the standard edition for readers and students of Mark Twain.

"This wonderful book illustrates precisely why we can never have enough Twain. His humor is timeless, his wisdom about all things without equal."--Ken Burns

"Mark Twain's "Helpful Hints for Good Living is a real discovery as well as a delight. It brings us fresh material from an old friend, and rediscovers great moments from the long shelves of his published writings. It's the best, most reliable collection of Mark Twain as social observer, moralist, and comic genius."--Bruce Michelson, author of "Mark Twain on the Loose and "Literary Wit

"A delightful display of Mark Twain's wit and humor loosely tied together under the guise of an advice book. Containing some things old, some things new, some things borrowed (in parody), but nothing blue, this charming collection of old favorites and new releases will guide you through life's exigencies in fine spirits, if not in fine form. Twain's advice occasionally touches the sublime, but only in the form of the ridiculous. This is the perfect gift book for any aficionado of Mark Twain, any connoisseur of the risible, or any stuffed-shirt who needs to lighten up."--Gregg Camfield, author of "The Oxford Companion to Mark Twain

"Twain came to understand himself as 'a moralist in disguise, ' and this collection reveals that truth clearly, without jettisoning any of his humor. If you are wrestling with how to advance stimulating dinner conversation, what to do with unwanted magazine subscriptions, how to deal with the 'odious flummery' of fashion, or whether or not to bring your dog to the next funeral, Twain is here to offer his gentle guidance. Old chestnuts and surprising obscurities are provided in a refreshed context through the rich andilluminating annotations of the ever brilliant editorial team at the Mark Twain Papers."--John Boyer, executive director of The Mark Twain House and Museum

This book serves up an elegant taste of Mark Twain's love for the food of the American South, spiced generously with his celebrated wit. Food lovers and humorists alike will revel in the timeless wisdom gathered here.--Nathalie Dupree, television host and author of "Nathalie Dupree's Southern Memories

""You ought to see Livy & me, now-a-days--you never saw such a serenely satisfied couple of doves in all your life. I spent Jan 1, 2, 3 & 5 there, & left at 8 last night. With my vile temper & variable moods, it seems an incomprehensible miracle that we two have been right together in the same house half the time for a year & a half, & yet have never had a cross word, or a lover's 'tiff, ' or a pouting spell, or a misunderstanding, or the faintest shadow of a jealous suspicion. Now isn't that absolutely wonderful? Could I have had such an experience with any other girl on earth? I am perfectly certain I could not. . . . We are to be married on Feb. 2d.""
So begins "Volume 4" of the letters, with Samuel Clemens anticipating his wedding to Olivia L. Langdon. The 338 letters in this volume document the first two years of a loving marriage that would last more than thirty years. They recount, in Clemens's own inimitable voice, a tumultuous time: a growing international fame, the birth of a sickly first child, and the near-fatal illness of his wife.
At the beginning of 1870, fresh from the success of "The Innocents Abroad," Clemens is on "the long agony" of a lecture tour and planning to settle in Buffalo as editor of the "Express," By the end of 1871, he has moved to Hartford and is again on tour, anticipating the publication of "Roughing It" and the birth of his second child. The intervening letters show Clemens bursting with literary ideas, business schemes, and inventions, and they show him erupting with frustration, anger, and grief, but more often with dazzling humor and surprising self-revelation. In addition to "Roughing It," Clemens wrote some enduringly popular short piecesduring this period, but he saved some of his best writing for private letters, many of which are published here for the first time.

Here is young Sam Clemens--in the world, getting famous, making love--in 155 magnificently edited letters that trace his remarkable self-transformation from a footloose, irreverent West Coast journalist to a popular lecturer and author of "The Jumping Frog, " soon to be a national and international celebrity. And on the move he was--from San Francisco to New York, to St. Louis, and then to Paris, Naples, Rome, Athens, Constantinople, Yalta, and the Holy Land; back to New York and on to Washington; back to San Francisco and Virginia City; and on to lecturing in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New York. Resplendent with wit, love of life, ambition, and literary craft, this new volume in the wonderful Bancroft Library edition of "Mark Twain's Letters" will delight and inform both scholars and general readers.
This volume has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mark Twain Foundation, Jane Newhall, and The Friends of The Bancroft Library.

The twelve notebooks in volume 1 provided information about the eighteen years in which the most profound, even dramatic, changes took place in Clemens' life. He early achieved the limits of his boyhood ambition by becoming a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River, a position there is no reason to believe he would have abandoned if the Civil War had not forced him to do so. In fleeing from a war which principle and temperament prevented him from supporting, Clemens entered into the first stages of his literary career by serving as a reporter for newspapers in Virginia City and San Francisco. When the restricted experiences available to a local reporter had been thoroughly explored, he moved on as a traveling correspondent to the Sandwich Islands and then still farther to Europe and the Near East. The latter travels provided him with material for The Innocents Abroad, the book that established Mark Twain as a popular author with an international reputation in 1869. In 1872 he further exploited his personal history by publishing Roughing It and in the same year visited England to gather material on English people and institutions. He returned to England the following year, this time accompanied by his family and by a secretary who would record the observations printed as the last notebook in volume 1. Volume 2 of Mark Twain's Notebooks and Journals, documenting Clemens' activities in the years from 1877 to 1883, consists largely of the record of three trips which would serve as the source for three travel narratives: the excursion to Bermuda, a prolonged tour of Europe, and an evocative return to the Mississippi River. Despite the common impulse to preserve observations and impressions for literary use, the contents of the notebooks are remarkably different in their vitality-and the works which developed from the notes are correspondingly varied.

The fifth in the complete edition of Mark Twain's letters, this volume contains 309 letters capturing the events between 1872-1873. Annotated and indexed, they are supplemented by genealogical charts of the Clemens and Langdon families, a transcription of the journals Samuel Clemens kept during his 1872 visit to England, book contracts, his preface to the English edition of "The Gilded Age", contemporary photographs of family and friends, and a gathering of newly discovered letters between 1865 and 1871. This volume is the 24th in the comprehensive edition known as "The Mark Twain Papers" and "Works of Mark Twain".

Volume III of Mark Twain's notebooks spans the years 1883 to 1891, a period during which Mark Twain's personal fortunes reached their zenith, as he emerged as one of the most successful authors and publishers in American literary history. During these years Life on the Mississippi, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court appeared, revealing the diversity, depth, and vitality of Mark Twain's literary talents. With his speeches, his public performances, and his lecture tour of 1884/1885, he became the most recognizable of national figures. At the same time, Mark Twain's growing fame and prosperity allowed him to plunge deeply into the business world, a sphere not suited to his erratic energies. He created the subscription publish firm of Charles L. Webster & Company, Which published the most profitable book of its time, the Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant. And he became the primary financial support for the ingenious but imperfectible Paige typesetter. Within a few years both the publishing company and the typesetter had taxed Mark Twain's patience, and pocket, beyond endurance. The near bankruptcy of the publishing firm and the debacle of the typesetter scheme finally resulted in 1891 in a drastic decision--to leave the house in Hartford, Connecticut, which had long been the symbol of Mark Twain's rising fortunes and idyllic family life, and move to Europe for an indefinite period in the hope of reducing the family's living expenses. The Clemens family would never return to the Hartford house, and the European stay would lengthen into an almost unbroken nine years of exile. Mark Twain's notebooks permit an intimate view of this turbulent period, whose triumphs were tempered by intimations of financial disaster and personal bitterness.