Mark Twain Project

FAIN: RQ-50853-14

University of California, Berkeley (Berkeley, CA 94704-5940)
Robert H. Hirst (Project Director: January 2014 to May 2017)

The preparation for simultaneous print and online publication of Volume 3 of the Autobiography of Mark Twain, completion of editorial work on Twain's San Francisco Correspondence and The Innocents Abroad, and the addition of several of the project's print editions to the open access website. (24 months)

The Mark Twain Project proposes to proofread and index Volume 3 of the Autobiography of Mark Twain, publishing it in print and on its open-access website (MTPO) by the end of 2015. (Volume 1 was so published in November 2010 and has sold half a million copies; Volume 2 was published in October 2013 and 100,000 copies have been printed.) The Project also proposes to complete all editorial work on two important early works in Mark Twain's canon: San Francisco Correspondence, 1865-1866 (some of his brilliant journalism collected for the first time) and The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrim's Progress (his first international bestseller). The Project also proposes to add the complete text of its print editions of Tom Sawyer and Notebooks & Journals, Volume 1 to MTPO, along with more letters (through 1883). And it plans to make various necessary upgrades and improvements to the infrastructure of MTPO, such as converting from TEI P4 to TEI P5.

Associated Products

The Mark Twain Papers: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 3 (Book)
Title: The Mark Twain Papers: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 3
Author: Mark Twain
Editor: Christopher M. Ohge, Associate Editor
Editor: Robert H. Hirst, General Editor
Editor: Benjamin Griffin, Editor
Editor: Harriet Elinor Smith, Editor
Editor: Victor Fischer, Associate Editor
Editor: Michael B. Frank, Associate Editor
Editor: Amanda Gagel, Associate Editor
Editor: Sharon K. Goetz, Associate Editor
Editor: Leslie Diane Myrick, Associate Editor
Abstract: When the first volume of Mark Twain’s uncensored Autobiography was published in 2010, it was hailed as an essential addition to the shelf of his works and a crucial document for our understanding of the great humorist’s life and times. This third and final volume crowns and completes his life’s work. Like its companion volumes, it chronicles Twain's inner and outer life through a series of daily dictations that go wherever his fancy leads. Created from March 1907 to December 1909, these dictations present Mark Twain at the end of his life: receiving an honorary degree from Oxford University; railing against Theodore Roosevelt; founding numerous clubs; incredulous at an exhibition of the Holy Grail; credulous about the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays; relaxing in Bermuda; observing (and investing in) new technologies. The Autobiography’s “Closing Words” movingly commemorate his daughter Jean, who died on Christmas Eve 1909. Also included in this volume is the previously unpublished “Ashcroft-Lyon Manuscript,” Mark Twain’s caustic indictment of his “putrescent pair” of secretaries and the havoc that erupted in his house during their residency. Fitfully published in fragments at intervals throughout the twentieth century, Autobiography of Mark Twain has now been critically reconstructed and made available as it was intended to be read. Fully annotated by the editors of the Mark Twain Project, the complete Autobiography emerges as a landmark publication in American literature.
Year: 2015
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/autobiography-of-mark-twain-volume-3-the-complete-and-authoritative-edition/oclc/916312994&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: WorldCat listing
Secondary URL: http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520279940
Secondary URL Description: Publisher's listing
Access Model: Book
Publisher: University of California Press
Type: Scholarly Edition
ISBN: 9780520279940
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

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