Ron Powers: Mark Twain: A Life (2005)•
Ron Powers (1941- )Ron Powers: Mark Twain: A Life (2005)
[Finally Books - Hospice Bookshop, Birkenhead - 12/5/2023]:
Ron Powers. Mark Twain: A Life. Free Press. New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2005.
I first came across William Dean Howells' book My Mark Twain in Edmund Wilson's classic anthology The Shock of Recognition (1943 - rev. ed. 1955). "As a hater of extracts and omissions," says Edmund Wilson in his preface, "I have printed the whole of everything." This doesn't seem to be quite true of Howells' book, as Wilson was unable to obtain permission to include the last and longest chapter, "Mark Twain: An Inquiry":
This essay is the most extensive critical study that Howells devoted to the work of his friend, and it has a unique interest in attempting to explain this work in terms of Mark Twain's Western origins, which Howells was in a position to understand so much better than the Eastern critics. [p.xi]He was, however, allowed to reprint the personal memoir part in full.
When I picked up a second-hand copy of Ron Powers' 2005 biography of Twain the other day from a Hospice Shop, it reminded me of just how many books there are which claim to give us the "authentic" Mark Twain - or, as the blurb above puts it, "the whole man."
Perhaps it would be better simply to relabel each of them "My Mark Twain" and have done with it. There are, it seems, as many version of Clemens / Twain as there are authors to write about him. Here are the most salient ones from my own collection:
- William Dean Howells. My Mark Twain. 1910. In The Shock of Recognition: The Development of Literature in the United States Recorded by the Men Who Made It. 1943. Illustrated by Robert F. Hallock. 2nd Edition. New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1955. 672-741.
- Van Wyck Brooks. The Ordeal of Mark Twain: New and Revised Edition. 1922. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1934.
- Dixon Wecter. Sam Clemens of Hannibal. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1952.
- Justin Kaplan. Mr Clemens and Mark Twain. 1966. Pelican Biographies. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970.
- Hamlin Hill. Mark Twain: God’s Fool. Hill and Wang. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 1973.
- John Lauber. The Making of Mark Twain: A Biography. 1985. American Century Series. The Noonday Press. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1988.
--. The Inventions of Mark Twain: A Biography. Hill and Wang. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1990. - Ron Powers. Mark Twain: A Life. Free Press. New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2005.
Howells' rather decorous personal memoir of his dealings with his famous friend and literary ally is perhaps most celebrated for its final passage:Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes — I knew them all and all the rest of our sages, poets, seers, critics, humorists; they were like one another and like other literary men; but Clemens was sole, incomparable, the Lincoln of our literature."The Lincoln of our literature' - it's a fine phrase. This canonisation of the dead humorist may have seemed a trifle presumptuous at the time, but posterity has vindicated it. The only comparable tribute is Ernest Hemingway's:All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn ... it's the best book we've had. All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.- The Green Hills of Africa (1935)
There have been many attempts to discredit or pour scorn on the central thesis of this book - the fatal influence of Eastern decorum in general, and the censorship of his wife in particular, on the wild talent of Mark Twain. However, like Edmund Wilson's fateful suggestion that the ghosts in 'The Turn of the Screw' are all in the governess's mind, it refuses to roll over and die. It's a splendidly spirited book which has had a lasting influence on our reading of Twain as a dual, conflicted individual whose identities can best be separately analysed under the names Samuel Clemens and Mark Twain.
An indispensible account of the early life and influences on the future Mark Twain. The prestigious Kirkus Reviews described it as follows:Twain's idealized early years were grist to the mill of his fertile imagination - with even his later works such as The Prince & the Pauper, & The Connecticut Yankee having roots in boyhood enthusiasms. In tapping new sources in this account that treats microscopically of Twain's progenitors, Twain & the man, neighbors & playmates, much of the incidental life of Hannibal has points of variance with the accepted biography by Albert Bigelow Paine [Mark Twain: A Biography, 4 vols, 1912].
Justin Kaplan's first book was an immediate success, winning both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. He followed it up with well-received biographies of Lincoln Steffens (1974) and Walt Whitman (1980). Wikipedia characterises it as follows:Kaplan brought out the psychic split in Clemens' personality implied by the name Mark Twain, a Missouri-raised Westerner who enjoyed all the Eastern comforts of the Gilded Age. "He was bound to be tormented by the distinction and the split, always invidious, between performing humorist and man of letters, and he had no way of reconciling the two ... S.L. Clemens of Hartford dreaded to meet the obligations of Mark Twain, the traveling lecturer." "To the end he remained as much an enigma and prodigy to himself as he was to the thousands at the Brick Presbyterian Church in New York who filed past the casket, topped with a single wreath of laurel, where he lay in a white suit."Kaplan's decision to start the book in mid-stream, at the end of Clemens' triumphant tour of the country in the wake of the success of the "Jumping Frog" sketch, was seen as very innovative at the time - it's interesting that Powers copies this technique in the prologue of his own biography, published forty years later - and Kaplan's remains probably the most readable and insightful of all the Twain biographies. Conceptually, it remains firmly in the Van Wyck Brooks camp, and has been accused (mainly by rival biographers) of being excessively "Freudian" in its approach, but I think this can be discounted by potential readers. I've read it twice myself, each time with renewed admiration.
The tragic story of Mark Twain's last years keeps on expanding with new revelations and scandals - most recently with the publication in full of Twain's own detailed account of his disputes with his secretary Isabel Lyon and her husband Ralph Ashcroft in volume 3 of the complete version of his Autobiography (2010-15). Hamlin Hill certainly makes a gripping tale of it, and while more information may have come to light since he wrote his book in 1973, the sense he conveys of the horror and absurdity of it all remains compelling.
As you can see from his decision to present his biography in two parts, covering roughly the Western and Eastern eras of Clemens / Twain's life, Lauber remains firmly under the spell of Brooks and Kaplan. However, since much new information about his life and writings had come to light by the 1980s, the need for a new biography seemed apparent to him.
Publishers Weekly commented:Though authoritative and lively, little of this will be new to the novelist's admirers; only the emphasis here is different.Perhaps, though, it was his status as a Canadian university teacher which irritated them most. In any case, the series of publications, both popular and scholarly, overseen by The Mark Twain project, from 1967 onwards would in themselves have justified an updated look at the author's life and times.
Which brings us to Ron Powers, and his own biography. One reviewer comments:Powers’s prose in this adventurous biography is much like Twain himself – thoughtful, complex, often quite clever and, at times, almost irreverent. But readers who have grown accustomed to the alluring literary voice of biographers such as Chernow or McCullough will find this biography rougher terrain. The narrative is delightfully trenchant and penetrating but rarely elegant or smooth-flowing … and never settles into a rhythm for long.These are both fair points. Powers' prose is a little laboured, and the 'aftermath' is indeed often the most interesting part of a biography, but given the immense task he's set himself, I think it would probably better to concentrate on what he has achieved rather than what he hasn't. As the Independent reviewer puts it: "the book is, on the whole, a joy, and I'd be surprised if anyone who, on reading the moving narrative of Mark Twain's (Sam Clemens') death in the final chapter, did not feel his eyes run over."
... Finally, the biography ends promptly with Twain’s death; no consideration of his life or legacy is provided beyond that which is subtly injected into preceding chapters. Since much of his fame accrued after his death, Powers’s failure to consider Twain within the context of our time is regrettable.
Autobiography of Mark Twain. Ed. Harriet Elinor Smith et al. 3 vols. A Publication of the Mark Twain Project of The Bancroft Library. The Mark Twain Papers. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2010-15.
Of course, since the publication of Ron Powers' book, the complete text of Twain's warts-and-all Autobiography has - extremely belatedly - been released to readers.
This proved such an unexpectedly successful publishing endeavour that the writer's own voice has now to a large extent taken over from those of any middlemen and interpreters, despite the chaotic tangle of material which these volumes actually contain.
There have been two earlier attempts to prune it all into a manageable shape (three, if you count Bernard DeVoto's set of themed anthologies pruned from the Autobiography materials: Mark Twain in Eruption (1940), Mark Twain at Work (1952), and Letters from the Earth (1962)):
Mark Twain's Autobiography. Ed. Albert Bigelow Paine. 2 vols. New York & London: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1924.
Paine, Twain's authorised biographer, tried to tidy up the numerous dictations which constituted the manuscript into a single coherent - albeit still somewhat disjointed - text. In the process he cut out more than half of the text and censored everything that he did include.
The Autobiography of Mark Twain. 1959. Ed. Charles Neider. A Perennial Classic. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, Incorporated, n.d.
As part of his self-imposed mission to re-edit virtually the whole of Mark Twain's oeuvre, Charles Neider condensed the Autobiography into a coherent chronological sequence. In the process he created a very readable one-volume text.
His other Herculean efforts along these lines include:
- The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain: Now Collected for the First Time. Ed. Charles Neider. New York: Hanover House, 1957.
- The Complete Humorous Sketches and Tales of Mark Twain: Now Collected for the First Time. Drawings by Mark Twain. Ed. Charles Neider. New York: Hanover House, 1961.
- The Complete Essays of Mark Twain: Now Collected for the First Time. Drawings by Mark Twain. Ed. Charles Neider. New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1963.
- The Complete Novels of Mark Twain: For the First Time, All Eleven Novels Completely Reset, in Two Volumes, from the First Edition Texts. Vol. 1: "The Gilded Age" (1873), "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" (1876), "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" (1884), "The Prince and the Pauper" (1881). Ed. Charles Neider. New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1964.
- The Complete Novels of Mark Twain: For the First Time, All Eleven Novels Completely Reset, in Two Volumes, from the First Edition Texts. Vol. 2: "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" (1889), "The American Claimant" (1892), "Tom Sawyer Abroad" (1894), "Pudd'nhead Wilson" (1894), "Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc" (1896), "Tom Sawyer Detective" (1896), "Those Extraordinary Twins" (1892). Ed. Charles Neider. New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1964.
- The Adventures of Colonel Sellers: Being Mark Twain’s Share of ‘The Gilded Age,’ a Novel Which he Wrote with Charles Dudley Warner, Now Published Separately for the First Time and Comprising, in Effect, a New Work. Ed. Charles Neider. 1965. London: Chatto and Windus, 1966.
- The Complete Travel Books of Mark Twain: The Early Works: "The Innocents Abroad" and "Roughing It". 1869 & 1872. Ed. Charles Neider. New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1966.
- The Complete Travel Books of Mark Twain: The Later Works: "A Tramp Abroad", "Life on the Mississippi", and "Following the Equator". 1880, 1883 & 1897. Ed. Charles Neider. New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1966.
- The Selected Letters of Mark Twain. New York: Harper & Row, 1982.
There are, however, other ways of commenting on the life and works of Mark Twain. I first saw the film above, a pioneering work of claymation, in the mid-1980s, and was astonished by how impressive a job they'd made of it. The animation was fascinating, but the vignettes of Mark Twain tales inserted into the central fantasy narrative were also exceptionally well chosen and well presented. It's a little-known and sadly underrated piece of work, and I'd be delighted to have the chance to see it again.
If you're familiar with the basic technique of Ken Burns documentaries, you won't find too many surprises here. It's a lengthy amble through Mark Twain's life, with numerous talking heads commenting on the action - some far more helpfully than others - but adding up to a very solid piece of work. I'd certainly recommend it as an introduction to the subject, but also to those looking for another perspective on a figure they're already pretty familiar with.
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All of which has inspired me to go off on a bit of a tangent. Mark Twain is certainly a towering figure in modern American culture. Does he have any significant rivals?
Well, as far as 19th century literature goes, I'd say there were only two: Herman Melville and Walt Whitman. All three were somewhat suspect figures at the time, rediscovered and canonised by 20th century critics.
But why is this? Why has the earlier authorised line-up of American writers fallen into (comparative) neglect, while these three outsiders have moved to centre stage?
If you did want to propound a Freudian reading of 19th-century American Literature (and it seems I do), it would clearly be necessary to start with its official face. The anointed one amongst all the New England household poets was definitely Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and The Song of Hiawatha is his principal showpiece.
Which brings us to that official novelist of the divided American soul: Nathaniel Hawthorne, with his masterpiece The Scarlet Letter.
And finally there's the philosopher and conscience of the group, Emerson, with his essays on "Nature" and "Self-Reliance" - which Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. referred to as America's "intellectual Declaration of Independence."
Each of these Superego-heavy writers might be said to conceal (or congeal) an Id - or a Shadow, in Jungian terms. For Longfellow, it's the suspiciously democratic and gender-fluid Walt Whitman, with his endlessly written and over-written Leaves of Grass.
For Hawthorne, it's his bumptiously intrusive neighbour Herman Melville, brandishing the just-completed Moby-Dick, which he claims Hawthorne helped to inspire!
For Emerson it's Mark Twain, that cracker-barrel philosopher and village wiseacre, who happens also - irritatingly - to be touched with genius:
Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.It's no real disparagement of the first three writers to point out how difficult it is for contemporary readers to approach their works as anything much but historical documents. The other three now bulk so large that it's hard to see anything past them - and yet each of them is so different, and inhabits so idiosyncratic a world, that there's no real competition between them.
You may ask where Edgar Allan Poe is in all this? Nowhere. He's now become an unavoidable part of world, not just American culture. The same would have to be said of Henry James, albeit in a very different way. Henry Thoreau, too, represents a distinct strand of ecological and ethical thinking which has far more than local significance.
Books I own are marked in bold:
- The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873)
- [with Charles Dudley Warner]. The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today. 1873. Introduction by Justin D. Kaplan. 1964. Washington Paperback WP-40. Seattle & London: University of Washington Press, 1968.
- The Adventures of Colonel Sellers: Being Mark Twain’s Share of ‘The Gilded Age,’ a Novel Which he Wrote with Charles Dudley Warner, Now Published Separately for the First Time and Comprising, in Effect, a New Work. Ed. Charles Neider. 1965. London: Chatto and Windus, 1966.
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876)
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. 1876. The World’s Popular Classics: Art-Type Edition. New York: Books, Inc., n.d.
- The Prince and the Pauper (1881)
- The Prince and the Pauper: A Tale for Young People of All Ages. 1881. Illustrated by Robert Hodgson. Children’s Illustrated Classics C.I.C. 80. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd. / New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. Inc., 1968.
- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. 1884. Ed. Peter Coveney. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985.
- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: An Annotated Text / Backgrounds and Sources / Essays in Criticism. 1884. Ed. Sculley Bradley, Richmond Croom Beatty, & E. Hudson Long. A Norton Critical Edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1962.
- The Annotated Huckleberry Finn: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade). Ed. Michael Patrick Hearn. Illustrations by E. W. Kemble. New York & London: W. W. Norton, 2001.
- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889)
- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. 1889. Seven Seas Books: A Collection of Works by Writers in the English Language. Berlin: Seven Seas Publishers, 1963.
- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court: An Authoritative Text / Backgrounds and Sources / Composition and Publication / Criticism. 1889. Ed. Allison R. Ensor. A Norton Critical Edition. New York & London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1982.
- The American Claimant (1892)
- The American Claimant. 1892. With 81 Illustrations by Dan Beard and Hal Hurst. London: Chatto & Windus, Picadilly, 1892.
- Those Extraordinary Twins (1892)
- Pudd'nhead Wilson / Those Extraordinary Twins / The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg. 1894, 1892 & 1899. Ed. R. D. Gooder. The World’s Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
- Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894)
- Pudd'nhead Wilson: A Tale. 1894. Introduction by F. R. Leavis. 1955. The Zodiac Press. London: Chatto & Windus Ltd., 1967.
- Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894)
- Tom Sawyer Abroad and The American Claimant. 1894 & 1892. The Florida Edition of Mark Twain, 4/18. London: Chatto & Windus, 1926.
- Tom Sawyer, Detective (1896)
- Tom Sawyer Abroad / Tom Sawyer, Detective. 1894 & 1896. A Magnum Easy Eye Book. New York: Lancer Books, Inc., 1968.
- Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (1896)
- Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, by the Sieur Louis de Conte (Her Page and Secretary). Freely translated out of the Ancient French into Modern English from the Original Unpublished Manuscript in the National Archives of France by Jean François Alden. 1896. The Complete Novels of Mark Twain. New York: Nelson Doubelday, Inc., n.d.
- The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg (1899)
- Pudd'nhead Wilson / Those Extraordinary Twins / The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg. 1894, 1892 & 1899. Ed. R. D. Gooder. The World’s Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
- A Horse's Tale (1907)
- The Mysterious Stranger (1916)
- The Mysterious Stranger. Ed. Walter Blair. The Mark Twain Papers. 1969. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1970.
- The Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts. Ed. Walter Blair. The Mark Twain Papers. 1969. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005.
- The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and Other Sketches (1867)
- Mark Twain's (Burlesque) Autobiography and First Romance (1871)
- Sketches New and Old (1875)
- A True Story and the Recent Carnival of Crime (1877)
- Punch, Brothers, Punch! and Other Sketches (1878)
- The Stolen White Elephant Etc. (1882)
- The Stolen White Elephant Etc. 1882. The Florida Edition of Mark Twain, 13/18. London: Chatto & Windus, 1927.
- Merry Tales (1892)
- The £1,000,000 Bank Note and Other New Stories (1893)
- The £1,000,000 Bank Note and Other Stories. 1893. The Florida Edition of Mark Twain, 14/18. London: Chatto & Windus, 1925.
- Extracts from Adam's Diary. Illustrated by Frederick Strothmann (1904)
- Eve's Diary. Illustrated by Lester Ralph (1906)
- The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories (1906)
- The Curious Republic of Gondour and Other Whimsical Sketches (1919)
- The Private Life of Adam and Eve: Being Extracts from Their Diaries, Translated from the Original Mss. (1931)
- The Washoe Giant in San Francisco (1938)
- The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain (1957)
- The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain: Now Collected for the First Time. Ed. Charles Neider. New York: Hanover House, 1957.
- The Complete Humorous Sketches and Tales of Mark Twain (1961)
- The Complete Humorous Sketches and Tales of Mark Twain: Now Collected for the First Time. Drawings by Mark Twain. Ed. Charles Neider. New York: Hanover House, 1961.
- Which Was the Dream? (1966)
- Mark Twain's Fables of Man (1972)
- The Devil’s Race-Track: Mark Twain’s Great Dark Writings. The Best from Which Was the Dream? and Fables of Man. 1966 & 1972. Ed. John S. Tuckey. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980.
- Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer Among the Indians (1989)
- Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer Among the Indians and Other Unfinished Stories. Foreword & Notes by Dahlia Armon & Walter Blair. Texts ed. Dahlia Armon, Paul Baender, Walter Blair, William M. Gibson, & Franklin R. Rogers. A Publication of the Mark Twain Project of The Bancroft Library. The Mark Twain Library. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989.
- Collected Stories (2011)
- Collected Stories. Introduction by Robert McCrum. Illustrations by Roger Fereday. 3 vols. London: The Folio Society, 2011.
- The Innocents Abroad (1869)
- The Innocents Abroad. 1869. Library of Classics. London & Glasgow: Collins Clear-Type Press, n.d. [c.1955].
- The Complete Travel Books of Mark Twain: The Early Works: 'The Innocents Abroad" and "Roughing It". 1869 & 1872. Ed. Charles Neider. New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1966.
- Roughing It (1872)
- Roughing It. 1872. Ed. Hamlin Hill. The Penguin American Library. Ed. John Seelye. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981.
- The Complete Travel Books of Mark Twain: The Early Works: 'The Innocents Abroad" and "Roughing It". 1869 & 1872. Ed. Charles Neider. New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1966.
- Old Times on the Mississippi (1876)
- The Portable Mark Twain. Ed. Bernard DeVoto. 1946 & 1968. The Viking Portable Library. New York: The Viking Press. Inc., 1971. 49-118
- Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion (1877)
- A Tramp Abroad (1880)
- A Tramp Abroad. 1880. Introduction by Norman Lewis. London: Century Publishing Co. Ltd. / Gentry Books Limited, 1982.
- Life on the Mississippi (1883)
- Life on the Mississippi. 1883. Introduction by James M. Cox. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986.
- Following the Equator [aka More Tramps Abroad] (1897)
- Following the Equator. 1897. Introduction by Anthony Brandt. National Geographic Adventure Classics. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 2005.
- Letters from Hawaii. 1866 (1947)
- Mark Twain’s Letters from Hawaii. 1866 & 1966. Ed. A. Grove Day. Pacific Classics, 5. Honolulu: The University Press of Hawaii, 1975.
- Memoranda (1870–1871)
- How to Tell a Story and other Essays (1897)
- What is Man? (1906)
- What is Man? 1906. Introduction by S. K. Ratcliffe. Thinker’s Library, 60. London: C. A. Watts and Co. Limited, 1936.
- Is Shakespeare Dead? (1909)
- Moments with Mark Twain (1920)
- Europe and Elsewhere. Ed. Albert Bigelow Paine (1923)
- Mark Twain's Notebook (1935)
- The Portable Mark Twain (1946)
- The Portable Mark Twain. Ed. Bernard DeVoto. 1946 & 1968. The Viking Portable Library. New York: The Viking Press. Inc., 1971.
- Letters from the Earth (1962)
- Letters from the Earth. 1962. Ed. Bernard DeVoto. Preface by Henry Nash Smith. A Crest Reprint. Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1964.
- The Complete Essays of Mark Twain (1963)
- The Complete Essays of Mark Twain: Now Collected for the First Time. Drawings by Mark Twain. Ed. Charles Neider. New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1963.
- Clemens of the Call (1969)
- Clemens of the Call: Mark Twain in San Francisco. Ed. Edgar M. Branch. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969.
- A Pen Warmed Up In Hell (1972)
- Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches & Essays. 2 vols (1992)
- Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches & Essays 1852-1890. Ed. Louis J. Budd. The Library of America, 60. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1992.
- Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches & Essays 1891-1910. Ed. Louis J. Budd. The Library of America, 61. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1992.
- The Bible According to Mark Twain (1996)
- The Bible According to Mark Twain: Irreverent Writings on Eden, Heaven and the Flood by America's Master Satirist. Ed. Howard G. Baetzhold & Joseph B. McCullough. 1995. A Touchstone Book. New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1996.
- Mark Twain's Autobiography. 2 vols (1924)
- Mark Twain's Autobiography. Ed. Albert Bigelow Paine. 2 vols. New York & London: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1924.
- The Autobiography of Mark Twain (1959)
- The Autobiography of Mark Twain. 1959. Ed. Charles Neider. A Perennial Classic. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, Incorporated, n.d.
- Autobiography of Mark Twain. 3 vols (2010-2015)
- Autobiography of Mark Twain. Ed. Harriet Elinor Smith et al. Vol. 1 of 3. A Publication of the Mark Twain Project of The Bancroft Library. The Mark Twain Papers. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2010.
- Autobiography of Mark Twain. Ed. Benjamin Griffin, Harriet Elinor Smith et al. Vol. 2 of 3. A Publication of the Mark Twain Project of The Bancroft Library. The Mark Twain Papers. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2013.
- Autobiography of Mark Twain. Ed. Benjamin Griffin, Harriet Elinor Smith et al. Vol. 3 of 3. A Publication of the Mark Twain Project of The Bancroft Library. The Mark Twain Papers. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2015.
- Mark Twain's Library of Humor (1888)
- [with William Dean Howells, & Charles Hopkins Clark]. Mark Twain's Library of Humor. Illustrated by E. W. Kemble. 1888. London: Chatto & Windus, 1910.
- Howells, William Dean. My Mark Twain. 1910. In The Shock of Recognition: The Development of Literature in the United States Recorded by the Men Who Made It. 1943. Illustrated by Robert F. Hallock. 2nd Edition. New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1955. 672-741.
- Brooks, Van Wyck. The Ordeal of Mark Twain: New and Revised Edition. 1922. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1934.
- Hill, Hamlin. Mark Twain: God’s Fool. Hill and Wang. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 1973.
- Kaplan, Justin. Mr Clemens and Mark Twain. 1966. Pelican Biographies. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970.
- Lauber, John. The Making of Mark Twain: A Biography. 1985. American Century Series. The Noonday Press. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1988.
- Lauber, John. The Inventions of Mark Twain: A Biography. Hill and Wang. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1990.
- Powers, Ron. Mark Twain: A Life. Free Press. New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2005.
- Wecter, Dixon. Sam Clemens of Hannibal. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1952.
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