" Mark Twain' s autobiography is a classic of American letters, to be ranked with the autobiographies of Benjamin Franklin and Henry Adams. . . . It has the marks of greatness in it— style, scope, imagination, laughter, tragedy. "
— From the Introduction by Charles Neider
Mark Twain was a figure larger than life: massive in talent, eruptive in temperament, unpredictable in his actions. He crafted stories of heroism, adventure, tragedy, and comedy that reflected the changing America of the time, and he tells his own story with the same flair he brought to his fiction. Writing this autobiography on his deathbed, Twain vowed to be " free and frank and unembarrassed" in the recounting of his life and his experiences.
With an introduction by Charles Neider, and featuring sixteen pages of photographs, this edition was the first to arrange Twain' s autobiographical writings in chronological order, and it presents a man who is more than a match for the expanding America of riverboats, gold rushes, and the vast westward movement that provided the material for his beloved novels.
