The Autobiography of Mark Twain Lib/E

Mark Twain's daughter, Susy, wrote: "Papa...doesn't like to go to church at all, why I never understood, until just now, he told us the other day that he couldn't bear to hear any one talk but himself, but that he could listen to himself talk for hours without getting tired, of course he said this in joke, but I've no dought [sic] it was founded on truth."--from the book Here is one of the great autobiographies of the English language: exuberant, wonderfully contemporary in spirit, written by a man twice as large as life, who--he said so himself--had no trouble remembering everything that had ever happened to him, and a lot of things besides. Nothing ever happened to Mark Twain in a small way. His adventures were invariably fraught with drama. Success and failure for him were equally spectacular. And so he roared down the years, feuding with publishers, being a sucker for inventors, always learning wisdom at the point of ruin and always relishing the absurd spectacle of humankind, whom he regarded with a blend of vitriol and affection.

About the Author :
Mark Twain, pseudonym of Samuel L. Clemens (1835-1910), was born in Florida, Missouri, and grew up in Hannibal on the west bank of the Mississippi River. He attended school briefly and then at age thirteen became a full-time apprentice to a local printer. When his older brother Orion established the Hannibal Journal, Samuel became a compositor for that paper and then, for a time, an itinerant printer. With a commission to write comic travel letters, he traveled down the Mississippi. Smitten with the riverboat life, he signed on as an apprentice to a steamboat pilot. After 1859, he became a licensed pilot, but two years later the Civil War put an end to the steam-boat traffic. In 1861, he and his brother traveled to the Nevada Territory where Samuel became a writer for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, and there, on February 3, 1863, he signed a humorous account with the pseudonym Mark Twain. The name was a river man's term for water "two fathoms deep" and thus just barely safe for navigation. In 1870 Twain married and moved with his wife to Hartford, Connecticut. He became a highly successful lecturer in the United States and England, and he continued to write. Michael Anthony is an actor and director with a lengthy resume in the Washington, DC, area.

Review :
"A book filled with richnesses of humor and tragedy of disappointment and triumph, of sweetness and bitterness, and all in that unsurpassed American prose." -- "New York Herald Tribune Book Review" "It is worth reading because the man is in it." -- "Saturday Review" "Magnificently alive." -- "Library Journal" "The book is pleasing and will invite readers to learn more of this great man of letters who was sensitive to the comic and the tragic of his times." -- "Wisconsin Library Bulletin"