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, untrammeled
by literary conventions.
Necessarily such a collection does not constitute
a detailed life story, but is supplementary to it.
An extended biography of Mark Twain has already been
published. His letters are here gathered for
those who wish to pursue the subject somewhat more
exhaustively from the strictly personal side.
Selections from this correspondence were used in the
biography mentioned. Most of these are here reprinted
in the belief that an owner of the “Letters”
will wish the collection to be reasonably complete.
[Etext Editor’s Note: A. B. Paine considers
this compendium a supplement to his “Mark Twain,
A Biography”, I have arranged the volumes of
the “Letters” to correspond as closely
as possible with the dates of the Project Gutenberg
six volumes of the “Biography”. D.W.]
MARK TWAIN—A BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, for nearly
half a century known and celebrated as “Mark
Twain,” was born in Florida, Missouri, on November
30, 1835. He was one of the foremost American
philosophers of his day; he was the world’s
most famous humorist of any day. During the later
years of his life he ranked not only as America’s
chief man of letters, but likewise as her best known
and best loved citizen.
The beginnings of that life were sufficiently unpromising.
The family was a good one, of old Virginia and Kentucky
stock, but its circumstances were reduced, its environment
meager and disheartening. The father, John Marshall
Clemens—a lawyer by profession, a merchant
by vocation—had brought his household to
Florida from Jamestown, Tennessee, somewhat after
the manner of judge Hawkins as pictured in The Gilded
Age. Florida was a small town then, a mere village
of twenty-one houses located on Salt River, but judge
Clemens, as he was usually called, optimistic and
speculative in his temperament, believed in its future.
Salt River would be made navigable; Florida would
become a metropolis. He established a small
business there, and located his family in the humble
frame cottage where, five months later, was born a
baby boy to whom they gave the name of Samuel—a
family name—and added Langhorne, after an
old Virginia friend of his father.
