Spring 2012 - University of California Press

General interest
Volume 1, Reader’s Edition
Mark Twain
Autobiography of Mark Twain
Edited by Harriet Elinor Smith and Other Editors
of the Mark Twain Project
“This first installment of Twain’s autobiography brings us closer to
all of him than we have ever come before.” New York Review of Books
“Mark Twain is terrific company, plain and simple. He knew everyone,
went everywhere, seemed to be interested in everything and
is capable of making the reader—in 2010—laugh on nearly every
page.” New York Times
“His ‘whole frank mind,’ sharp and funny, is seared onto every page.”
Entertainment Weekly
“Every word beguiles.” Wall Street Journal
“I start reading Twain’s Autobiography at any page and don’t want to
stop, for the sheer voluptuous pleasure of the prose.”
Twitter: Roger Ebert
The year 2010 marked the 100th anniversary of Mark Twain’s death.
In celebration of this important milestone and in honor of the cherished
tradition of publishing Mark Twain’s works, UC Press published
Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1, the first of a projected
three-volume edition of the complete, uncensored autobiography. The
book became an immediate bestseller and was hailed as the capstone
of the life’s work of America’s favorite author.
This Reader’s Edition, a portable paperback in larger type, republishes
the text of the hardcover Autobiography in a form that is convenient
for the general reader, without the editorial explanatory notes. It
includes a brief introduction describing the evolution of Mark Twain’s
ideas about writing his autobiography, as well as a chronology of his
life, brief family biographies, and an excerpt from the forthcoming
Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2—a controversial but characteristically
humorous attack on Christian doctrine.
Gold Medal, Commonwealth Club of California
Honorable Mention in Nonfiction, Northern
California Independent Booksellers Association
PROSE Award, Association of American Publishers
Harriet Elinor Smith is an editor at the Mark Twain
Project, which is housed within the Mark Twain
Papers, the world’s largest archive of primary
materials by this major American writer. Under the
direction of General Editor Robert H. Hirst, the
Project’s editors are producing the first comprehensive
edition of all of Mark Twain’s writings.
MARCH
440 pages, 6 x 9”, 45 b/w photographs,
21 line figures, 2 diagrams
American Literature/Autobiography/Mark Twain
World
paper 978-0-520-27225-5 $26.95/£18.95
www.ucpress.edu | 5