Revealing Mark Twain’s Autobiography

Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens) insisted that the stories he dictated or wrote about his own life be withheld for 100 years after his death — ensuring that he would be “dead, unaware, and indifferent” when the texts came out. In 2010, upon the centenary of the author’s death, the editors of the Mark Twain Project at The Bancroft Library issued the first of a three-volume critical edition of the Autobiography of Mark Twain through UC Press. Robert Hirst, general editor of the Mark Twain Project, discusses Twain’s provocative autobiography. “If you’re bored with Mark Twain,” says Hirst, who has worked with the Twain texts since graduate school at Cal in 1967, “you either have no sense of humor, or you haven’t been paying attention.”