LibGuides: Mark Twain Resources: Biographies

Commemorative Plaque of Samuel Langhorn Clemens (Mark Twain)

Image provided via Smithsonian Open Access and the National Portrait Gallery. Original Artist unknown.

Biographies

Mark Twain by Ron Powers
Publication Date: 2005
Mark Twain founded the American voice. His works are a living national treasury: taught, quoted, and reprinted more than those of any writer except Shakespeare. Mark Twain offers an unrivalled insight into the life of one of America's greatest writers whose culteral influence was seminal in the creation of modern America.
The Life of Mark Twain by Gary Scharnhorst
Publication Date: 2018
This book begins the first multi-volume biography of Samuel Clemens to appear in over a century. Over three volumes, Scharnhorst elucidates the life of arguably the greatest American writer and reveals the alchemy of his gifted imagination.

Autobiography

Twain started dictating an autobiography in 1870, but abandoned and restarted the project several times. His reminisces were published posthumously as he intended. Due to both his own wishes for a long embargo as well as copyright law, his complete autobiography was not published until 2010. It contains his ruminations and thoughts. It does not follow a conventional autobiography format.

Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1 by Mark Twain; Harriet E. Smith (Editor); Benjamin Griffin (Editor); Victor Fischer (Editor); Michael Barry Frank (Editor); Sharon K. Goetz (Editor); Leslie Diane Myrick (Editor); Robert Hirst (Editor)
Publication Date: 2010
After dozens of false starts and hundreds of pages, Twain embarked on his "Final (and Right) Plan" for telling the story of his life. His innovative notion-to "talk only about the thing which interests you for the moment"-meant that his thoughts could range freely. The strict instruction that many of these texts remain unpublished for 100 years meant that when they came out, he would be "dead, and unaware, and indifferent," and that he was therefore free to speak his "whole frank mind."

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