"It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense." - Mark Twain Within your hands is a glimpse into the life, mind, soul, and "truth" of cherished American icon, Mark Twain. This uncensored autobiography is not only a legacy he left behind, but also a gift to all.
Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in 1835 in Florida, Missouri. He grew up on the shores of the Mississippi River and took his pen name from the way Mississippi steamboat crews measured the river's depth (the cry "Mark twain " meant the river was at least 12 feet deep and safe to travel).
Twain wrote prolifically, publishing novels, travelogues, newspaper articles, short stories, and political pamphlets. His best-known works are The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885).
On the surface, these novels are gripping adventure stories of boys running free on the Mississippi. However, on a deeper level, these novels are also serious works of social criticism. Written while America was still recovering from the Civil War and adjusting to the abolition of slavery, Twain's two best-known Mississippi River adventure tales also measure the depth of America's new economic and social realities.
His most personal and insightful writing came when he created his, "Final (and Right) Plan"-a free-flowing biography of the thoughts and interests he had toward the end of his life as he spoke his "whole frank mind." Along with the plan, came the instruction that the enclosed autobiography writings not be published in book form until 100 years after his death.
Today, we honor the life and writings of Mark Twain by publishing his personal opus-to reacquaint ourselves with the wit, wisdom, and ideals of this legendary American icon.

"This book is merely a personal narrative, and not a pretentious history or a philosophical dissertation. It is a record of several years of variegated vagabondizing, and its object is rather to help the resting reader while away an idle hour than afflict him with metaphysics, or goad him with science. Still, there is information in the volume . . ." Thus begins Mark Twain's Prefatory to "Roughing It." The book is a humorous account of Twain's six years spent in Nevada, San Francisco and the Sandwich Islands (as Hawaii was known at the time) and is comprised of various anecdotes and tall tales, told as only Mark Twain can tell them.

"I like "Joan of Arc" best of all my books; and it is the best; I know it perfectly well. And besides, it furnished me seven times the pleasure afforded me by any of the others; twelve years of preparation, and two years of writing. The others need no preparation and got none."
-- Mark Twain

Twain considered this book -- his last finished novel -- to be his most significant. Perhaps it is; certainly it's delightful -- but then, in retrospect, everything Twain did is good cause for delight.

Twain's story has been adapted and, er, borrowed from so often and so freely that you're probably familiar with it even if you've never read of it: a prince of sixteenth-century England meets his double in the slums of London. The two swap clothes -- and lives. Complications ensue. Tom Canty, the urchin, learns how luxury and power can become the death of a man, while his dopplegnger roams his kingdom, learning first hand of the cruelty of the Tudor monarchy. . . .

"Twain was . . . enough of a genius to build his morality into his books, with humor and wit and -- in the case of "The Prince and the Pauper" -- wonderful plotting."
-- E.L. Doctorow

"This book is merely a personal narrative, and not a pretentious history or a philosophical dissertation. It is a record of several years of variegated vagabondizing, and its object is rather to help the resting reader while away an idle hour than afflict him with metaphysics, or goad him with science. Still, there is information in the volume . . ." Thus begins Mark Twain's Prefatory to "Roughing It." The book is a humorous account of Twain's six years spent in Nevada, San Francisco and the Sandwich Islands (as Hawaii was known at the time) and is comprised of various anecdotes and tall tales, told as only Mark Twain can tell them.

"Twain wrote that Huck was based on Tom Blankenship, a poor white boy he knew in Hannibal, MO. But Shelley Fishkin found an 1874 article where Twain spoke of another boy, ten-year old black servant Jerry. Jerry was "the most artless, sociable and exhaustless talker I ever came across," Twain said. He added, "He did not tell me a single remarkable thing, or one that was worth remembering. And yet he was himself so interested in his small marvels, and they flowed so naturally and comfortably from his lips that . . . I listened as one who receives a revelation."

"It doesn't really matter whether or not Huck was black. Jim, Huck Finn's friend, was certainly black, and he is one of the most memorable characters in literature. Jim was sometimes referred to as "nigger Jim." Jim has a minstrel quality, but it's hard not to see the irony in his behavior, especially not when he lectures Huck on behaving like white trash. Mark Twain's writing and characters have influenced countless American writers. And no matter how many book-banning campaigns are launched due to the presence of the word "nigger" in Twain's books, particularly "Huckleberry Finn, " authors as diverse as Toni Morrison, Ralph Ellison, Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner have cited Twain as influences."

-- from Amy Sterling Casil's Introduction

"Well, it was the next spring after me and Tom Sawyer set our old nigger Jim free, the time he was chained up for a runaway slave down there on Tom's uncle Silas's farm in Arkansaw. The frost was working out of the ground, and out of the air, too, and it was getting closer and closer onto barefoot time every day; and next it would be marble time, and next mumblety-peg, and next tops and hoops, and next kites, and then right away it would be summer and going in a-swimming. It just makes a boy homesick to look ahead like that and see how far off summer is. . . ."

Huck Finn tells the tale in "Tom Sawyer, Detective" almost plaing the role of a reporter, as he relates what he's witnessed of a strangely peculiar murder, and tells us of Tom Sawyer's scene-stealing exploits in the trial that follows. . . . Many of the characters we all know from "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" return in this tale, with delightful results.

Twain's story has been adapted and, er, borrowed from so often and so freely that you're probably familiar with it even if you've never read of it: a prince of sixteenth-century England meets his double in the slums of London. The two swap clothes -- and lives. Complications ensue. Tom Canty, the urchin, learns how luxury and power can become the death of a man, while his doppleganger roams his kingdom, learning first hand of the cruelty of the Tudor monarchy. . . .

"Twain was . . . enough of a genius to build his morality into his books, with humor and wit and -- in the case of "The Prince and the Pauper" -- wonderful plotting."

-- E.L. Doctorow

"I like "Joan of Arc" best of all my books; and it is the best; I know it perfectly well. And besides, it furnished me seven times the pleasure afforded me by any of the others; twelve years of preparation, and two years of writing. The others need no preparation and got none." -- Mark Twain

Twain considered this book -- his last finished novel -- to be his most significant. Perhaps it is; certainly it's delightful -- but then, in retrospect, everything Twain did is good cause for delight.

This novel of Mark Twain's -- "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" -- gives us an odd view of the American literary genius: it shows is bent twoward science ficional. Twain developed a close and lasting friendship with scientific wunderkind Nikola Tesla, and the two spent quite a bit of time together (in Tesla's laboratory, among other places). Twain's fascination appears in his time traveler (from contemporary America, yet ), using his knowledge of science to introduce modern technology to Arthurian England. As with all works of a master lke Tawain, we highly recommend this novel -- but just between us, this book is a lot of fun, too. Go ahead, read it now.

"Most people easily picture Twain's long white handlebar moustache and can practically hear his riverman's drawl. Readers know he's Samuel Langhorne Clemens, and he's Mark Twain, and they've painted fences right alongside Tom Sawyer. Any number of young men have had crushes on Becky Thatcher, and any number of young women have laughed at Huck Finn's way of threading a needle. But none of Twain's eleven novels, nine travel books, and countless short stories and essays would have achieved their status had he not first paid attention himself: to everyone and everything that lived in his world."

-- from Amy Sterling Casil's Introduction

"H.L. Mencken wrote of Mark Twain, 'I believe that he was the true father of our national literature, the first genuinely American artist of the blood royal.' Father, Mark Twain is. And brother, friend, and wise old grandpa. But no offense to Mr. Mencken: Sam'l Clemens is American and there ain't no royalty around here 'ceptin maybe the Duke or some one like that. Unless it's the "Prince and the Pauper" or King Arthur in "Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court."

"Hank the Yankee asks, 'You know about transmigration of souls; do you know about transposition of epochs -- and bodies?'

"'Wit ye well, "I saw it done.'" Then, after a pause, added: 'I did it myself.'

"Just like Mark Twain -- Samuel Langhorne Clemens."

-- From Amy Sterling Casil's Introduction