[Gutenberg 3193] • Mark Twain's Letters — Volume 1 (1853-1866)

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About Mark Twain's Letters - Volume 1 by Mark Twain

Mark Twain's Letters - Volume 1 give us the background to his works and show Twain to us as a complex personality with very pronounced weaknesses and strengths : his deep and constant love for his wife Livy, his great capacity for true and loyal friendship, his impetuosity, his restlessness, his extravagance, his occasional childishness, his impatience, moodiness, vanity, generosity, tolerance, honesty, enthusiasm. Nowhere is the human being more truly revealed than in his letters. Not in literary letters-prepared with care, and the thought of possible publication-but in those letters wrought out of the press of circumstances, and with no idea of print in mind. A collection of such documents, written by one whose life has become of interest to mankind at large, has a value quite aside from literature, in that it reflects in some degree at least the soul of the writer. The letters of Mark Twain are peculiarly of the revealing sort. He was a man of few restraints and of no affectations. In his correspondence, as in his talk, he spoke what was in his mind, untrammelled by literary conventions. On his first trip to England to gather material for a book and cement relations with his newly authorized English publishers, Samuel Clemens was astounded to find himself hailed everywhere as a literary lion. America's premier humorist had begun his long tenure as an international celebrity. Meanwhile, he was coming into his full power at home. The Innocents Abroad continued to produce impressive royalties and his new book, Roughing It, was enjoying great popularity. In newspaper columns he appeared regularly as public advocate and conscience, speaking on issues as disparate as safety at sea and political corruption. Clemens's personal life at this time was for the most part fulfilling, although saddened by the loss of his nineteen-month-old son, Langdon, who died of diphtheria. Life in the Nook Farm community of writers and progressive thinkers and activists was proving to be all the Clemenses had hoped for. The letters in this volume, more than half of them never before published, capture the events of these years with detailed intimacy.