Chapters from My Autobiography

Nothing in Mark Twain’s life or in his extensive oeuvre is usual, so the reader should not expect his autobiography to be usual either. He dictated his memoirs four years before he died, in 1906, but only a small fragment was published in the North American Review, the very first literary magazine in the United States – 25 stories, musings, anecdotes and thoughts chosen based on the harmlessness of the contents (the author himself was planning not to get the memoirs published until after his death, but then he considered some of the parts suitable for contemporary readers). However, the rest of the original text survived as well and was published on the 100th anniversary of Twain’s death in 2010.<br/><br/>Twain’s autobiography is as colorful and entertaining as his entire oeuvre. What the reader gets is old and new stories, anecdotes about Twain’s private life, as well as about the political life of his time. Many of the stories are as funny as can be expected, while others are very moving, such as the chapter about the death of Twain’s daughter, but all of them are written in Twain’s easy to recognize, intense and thought-provoking style. What you get with these memoirs is the portrait of a man who is honest about his mistakes and is never shy to state his opinions about anything – a respectable man who has erred and fell, but stood up to become successful again.<br/><br/>Whether you read Chapters from my Autobiography when you are already familiar with Twain’s writing or you read it without having any previous knowledge of Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer or Puddn’head Wilson, you will certainly find this three-volume book entertaining and inspiring.<br/><br/>Twain had a colorful life that started when the Halley Comet first flew by our planet in 1835 and ended when the comet approached Earth for the second time in 2010 – two extraordinary events that serve as the frame for Twain’s extraordinary life.