"Mark Twain's autobiography is a classic of American letters, to be ranked with the autobiographies of Benjamin Franklin and Henry Adams. . . . It has the marks of greatness in it?style, scope, imagination, laughter, tragedy."
?From the Introduction by Charles Neider

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 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 is 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.

Mark Twain, who was born Samuel L. Clemens in Missouri in 1835, wrote some of the most enduring works of literature in the English language, including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc was his last completed book?and, by his own estimate, his best. Its acquisition by Harper & Brothers allowed Twain to stave off bankruptcy. He died in 1910.