The Autobiography of Mark Twain

One of the Modern Library’s 100 Best Nonfiction Books of the Twentieth Century: The great American writer tells his own story.

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 noted scholar 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 was 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.

“Twain’s own view of himself, his life and his family. Here are anecdotes and portraits, likes and dislikes. Here is the background for many of his books, from his boyhood to his travels, his bachelorhood to his married life . . . A full and rewarding repast.” —Kirkus Reviews

“A book filled with richness of humor and tragedy of disappointment and triumph, of sweetness and bitterness, and all in that unsurpassed American prose.” —New York Herald Tribune Book Review