by Mark Twain
Autobiographical Dictations, January–March 1906
9 January: MTA, 1:269–78, partial.
10 January: MTA, 1:278–91.
11 January: NAR 25, 481–89, partial.
12 January: NAR 16, 785–88, partial; MTA, 1:291–303, partial.
13 January: NAR 16, 788–92, partial; MTA, 1:303–12; AMT, 98–101.
15 January: NAR 16, 792–93, partial; MTA, 1:312–26, partial; AMT, 101–2.
16 January: MTA, 1:326–35.
17 January: NAR 14, 570–71, partial; MTA, 1:335–45, partial.
18 January: MTA, 1:345–50.
19 January: NAR 8, 1217–24, partial; NAR 22, 13–17, partial; MTA, 1:350–61, partial; AMT, 112–18.
23 January: MTA, 2:1–13, partial.
24 January: MTA, 2:13–23.
1 February: NAR 3, 577–80, partial; MTA, 2:23–33; AMT, 183, 185–86, 322.
2 February: NAR 3, 580–85, partial; MTA, 2:33–44, partial; AMT, 190–95, 322–24.
5 February: NAR 3, 585–89, partial; MTA, 2:44–59; AMT, 195–201.
6 February: MTA, 2:59–64, partial.
7 February: NAR 4, 705–10, partial; MTA, 2:64–73, partial; AMT, 201–3, 274–75.
8 February: NAR 4, 710–16; MTA, 2:73–83, partial; AMT, 204–10; SLC 2004, 173–76, partial.
9 February: NAR 5, 833–38; MTA, 2:83–91, partial; AMT, 210–13; SLC 2004, 15–19, partial.
12 February: NAR 5, 838–44; MTA, 2:91–99, partial; AMT, 33–37, 213–14.
13 February: MTA, 2:99–105; AMT, 43–44, 183–85.
14 February: MTA, 2:106–12; AMT, 186–90.
15 February: MTA, 2:112–17, partial; MTE, 249–52, partial.
16 February: MTA, 2:117–19, partial; MTE, 77–81, partial.
20 February: MTA, 2:120–26.
21 February: MTA, 2:126–28, partial.
22 February: MTA, 2:128–34.
23 February: MTA, 2:135–39, partial.
26 February: NAR 6, 961–64, partial; MTA, 2:139–51, partial.
5 March: NAR 7, 1089–91, partial; MTA, 2:151–60; SLC 2004, 20–22, partial.
6 March: NAR 7, 1092–95, partial; MTA, 2:160–66, partial.
7 March: NAR 6, 964–69; MTA, 2:166–72, partial.
8 March: NAR 21, 691–95, partial; MTA, 2:172–80, partial; AMT, 67–70.
9 March: NAR 23, 161–63, partial; MTA, 2:180–86, partial; AMT, 70–73.
12 March: MTA, 2:187–96.
14 March: MTA, 2:196–200, partial.
15 March: MTA, 2:200–212, partial.
16 March: MTA, 2:212–21, partial; AMT, 73–78.
20 March: MTL, 2:790–94, partial; MTE, 83–91, partial.
21 March: MTA, 2:221–29, partial.
22 March: NAR 6, 969–70, partial; MTA, 2:229–37; AMT, 190.
23 March: NAR 7, 1094–95, partial; MTA, 2:237–43, partial.
26 March: NAR 1, 321–22, partial; MTA, 2:243–56, partial; AMT, 107–9.
27 March: MTA, 2:256–68; AMT, 109–12.
28 March: NAR 10, 113–18, partial; MTA, 2:268–75, partial; AMT, 84–88.
29 March: NAR 10, 118–19, partial; NAR 11, 225–29, partial; MTA, 2:275–91, partial; AMT, 88–95, 98, 102–3.
30 March: MTA, 2:291–303, partial.
“Chapters from My Autobiography” in the North American Review, 1906–1907
The texts listed below in italic type were published in full or nearly so—that is, with no more than a paragraph or occasional sentence omitted.
Installment
Published
Contents,
NAR 1
7 Sept 1906
AD, 26 Mar 1906 (Introduction); My Autobiography [Random Extracts from It] (first part)
NAR 2
21 Sept 1906
AD, 21 May 1906; Scraps from My Autobiography. From Chapter IX (first part); [Robert Louis Stevenson and Thomas Bailey Aldrich]; AD, 3 Apr 1906
NAR 3
5 Oct 1906
ADs, 1 Feb 1906, 2 Feb 1906, 5 Feb 1906
NAR 4
19 Oct 1906
ADs, 7 Feb 1906, 8 Feb 1906
NAR 5
2 Nov 1906
ADs, 9 Feb 1906, 12 Feb 1906
NAR 6
16 Nov 1906
ADs, 26 Feb 1906, 7 Mar 1906, 22 Mar 1906
NAR 7
7 Dec 1906
ADs, 5 Mar 1906, 6 Mar 1906, 23 Mar 1906
NAR 8
21 Dec 1906
AD, 19 Jan 1906
NAR 9
4 Jan 1907
ADs, 13 Dec 1906, 1 Dec 1906, 2 Dec 1906
NAR 10
18 Jan 1907
ADs, 28 Mar 1906, 29 Mar 1906
NAR 11
1 Feb 1907
ADs, 29 Mar 1906 (misdated 28 Mar in the NAR), 2 Apr 1906
NAR 12
15 Feb 1907
[John Hay]; ADs, 5 Apr 1906, 6 Apr 1906
NAR 13
1 Mar 1907
My Autobiography [Random Extracts from It] (second part)
NAR 14
15 Mar 1907
ADs, 6 Dec 1906, 17 Dec 1906, 11 Feb 1907 (misdated 10 Feb in the NAR), 12 Feb 1907, 17 Jan 1906
NAR 15
5 Apr 1907
ADs, 8 Oct 1906, 22 Jan 1907
NAR 16
19 Apr 1907
ADs, 12 Jan 1906, 13 Jan 1906, 15 Jan 1906
NAR 17
3 May 1907
AD, 15 Oct 1906; Scraps from My Autobiography. From Chapter IX (second part)
NAR 18
17 May 1907
ADs, 21 Dec 1906, 28 Mar 1907
NAR 19
7 June 1907
ADs, 21 Dec 1906 (with note dated 22 Dec), 19 Nov 1906, 30 Nov 1906, 28 Mar 1907, 5 Sept 1906
NAR 20
5 July 1907
Notes on “Innocents Abroad”; AD, 23 Jan 1907
NAR 21
2 Aug 1907
ADs, 8 Nov 1906, 8 Mar 1906, 6 Jan 1907
NAR 22
Sept 1907
ADs, 10 Oct 1906, 19 Jan 1906 (dated 12 Mar 1906 in the NAR, with note dated 13 May 1907), 20 Dec 1906
NAR 23
Oct 1907
ADs, 9 Mar 1906, 16 Mar 1906, 26 July 1907, 30 July 1907
NAR 24
Nov 1907
ADs, 9 Oct 1906, 16 Oct 1906, 11 Oct 1906, 12 Oct 1906, 23 Jan 1907
NAR 25
Dec 1907
ADs, 11 Jan 1906, 3 Oct 1907
NOTE ON THE TEXT
The Introduction traces the history of Clemens’s work on his autobiography, from the preliminary manuscripts and dictations he produced between 1870 and 1905 through the Autobiographical Dictations that he began in early 1906. It also gives an explanation of his final plan for the Autobiography of Mark Twain, based largely on an analysis of various typescripts and manuscripts created in 1906. These source documents are summarized here, and the summary is followed by a description of the editorial policy that has been used to create the critical text of this edition.
THE DOCUMENTS
Manuscripts and typescripts (before 1906)
The source documents for the texts collected in the section entitled Preliminary Manuscripts and Dictations include manuscripts in the author’s hand as well as a diverse assortment of typescripts made from his dictation by James Redpath, Jean Clemens, or Josephine Hobby. Redpath took down Clemens’s words in an unidentified shorthand and typed the translation himself on an all-capitals typewriter. Jean Clemens, a novice at the typewriter, transcribed Isabel Lyon’s longhand notes. Hobby was a skilled stenographer and her own typist. Her typescripts are the most reliable, with Redpath’s and Jean’s somewhat less so. The manuscripts are the most straightforward record of the author’s intention, but even they sometimes contain errors. The editorial policy discussed below has been applied to each work, with adjustments as needed to accommodate its particular textual history, which is always described in detail in the Textual Commentary
at Mark Twain Project Online (MTPO).
TS1 (1906–1909)
Produced between 1906 and 1909, TS1 is the first of three distinct, sequentially paginated typescripts for the final plan of the autobiography as conceived by Clemens in 1906, now in the Mark Twain Papers. Typed by Hobby, it begins with the dictation of 9 January 1906 and ends with the dictation of 14 July 1908, extending far beyond the other sequences. Two later typists, Mary Louise Howden and William Edgar Grumman, produced an additional hundred or so pages of typescript, numbering each dictation separately. TS1 and the typescripts of Howden and Grumman, transcribed by each typist from his or her shorthand notes, are the primary record of Clemens’s dictated text. Together they are the only text for the roughly one hundred and seventy dictations made between late August 1906 and 1909. Clemens revised many of the pages of TS1 for publication in the North American Review, adjusting the wording to accommodate omissions and suppressing or altering text that he considered “written in too independent a fashion for a magazine.”1 Only in TS1 is the date of dictation close to the date the typescript was created. Many pages of TS1 were marked by Paine as the printer’s copy for his 1924 edition of the autobiography; he discarded some of the material he chose not to include, and those pages are now missing.
TS2 and TS4 (1906)
The page numbers on TS2 (made by Hobby) and TS4 (made by an unidentified typist) differ from those on TS1 and from each other because both typescripts begin with material not present in TS1 (everything before the 9 January 1906 dictation). Together TS2 and TS4 total over twenty-five hundred pages. Begun in mid-June, they provide conclusive evidence of exactly which of his accumulated drafts and false starts Clemens decided to include in his final plan for the autobiography. TS2 and TS4 begin with “My Autobiography [Random Extracts from It],” but omit the preface (“An Early Attempt”) that was written to introduce it. The second (three-part) preface—“The Latest Attempt,” “The Final (and Right) Plan,” and “Preface. As from the Grave”—is fully present in TS4, which also includes four Florentine Dictations, but in TS2 the five pages on which the three-part preface was typed, as well as the pages containing the third and fourth Florentine Dictations, are lost. Both typescripts continue with the 1906 Autobiographical Dictations that were begun on 9 January; TS2 ends with the dictation of 7 August, and TS4 ends with that of 29 August. Both typescripts incorporate the revisions that Clemens wrote on TS1. He further revised much of TS2, making improvements in wording as well as softening and censoring the texts for publication in the North American Review. He made no changes on TS4. Whenever TS1 is extant for a given dictation, TS4 is derivative and does not affect the critical text. When TS1 is missing, however, both TS2 and TS4 are relied on to recreate its text, since both derive from it, so that either one may contain authoritative readings that are not found in the other. When TS2 and TS4 do not vary from each other, they confirm the reading of the missing TS1.
TS3 and the NAR Extracts (1906–1907)
Typed by Hobby between early August 1906 and late January 1907, TS3 comprises fewer than one hundred and fifty pages. Prepared as printer’s copy for six installments in the North American Review, it reproduces the first section of “Scraps from My Autobiography. From Chapter IX,” one Florentine Dictation (“Robert Louis Stevenson and Thomas Bailey Aldrich”), and excerpts from the Autobiographical Dictations through 21 May 1906. It consists of four batches, each beginning with page 1. Three of the batches include the text for a single Review installment (NAR 2, NAR 3, and NAR 16), and one batch encompasses three installments (NAR 4, NAR 5, and NAR 6). TS3 was typed primarily from TS1, incorporating its revisions, and includes further changes made to accommodate magazine publication.
Above is a diagram of the textual relationships between TS1, TS2, TS3, and TS4 of the 1906–9 Autobiographical Dictations and the twenty-five NAR installments that published excerpts from them (and from one other typescript). The “Early Attempt” preface is not present in either TS2 (now incomplete) or TS4 (complete), but both typescripts include “My Autobiography [Random Extracts from It],” followed by the second three-part preface (“The Latest Attempt,” “The Final [and Right] Plan,” and “Preface. As from the Grave”) and four Florentine Dictations. TS3 was typed from the revised TS1 for all but one installment, NAR 16, which was typed from the revised TS2. The first and second parts of “Scraps from My Autobiography. From Chapter IX” were published in NAR installments 2 and 17, respectively, typeset directly from a typescript made by Jean Clemens in 1902. See the Appendix “Previous Publication” (pp. 366–67) for a list of the contents of each NAR installment.
Handwriting on the typescripts
Throughout the pages of TS1, TS2, and TS3 there are revisions, corrections, and editorial instructions in two colors of ink, in lead pencil, and in blue, purple, and red pencil. These were made not only by Clemens himself, but also by the following people: his typists, chiefly Hobby; his secretary, Isabel V. Lyon; Albert Bigelow Paine; George Harvey and David Munro, editors for the North American Review; Clara Clemens Gabrilowitsch; Paine’s successor as literary executor, Bernard DeVoto; and DeVoto’s assistant, Rosamond Hart Chapman. There are also specific instructions to omit this or that passage, each signed “ABP” by Paine and (though also in Paine’s hand) “CG” for Clara Clemens Gabrilowitsch, who along with Paine had been charged with deciding which of her father’s papers to publish.
Paine felt free to alter the typescripts (and some manuscripts) by writing his changes on them, and even to hand some of them to the printer to set up his 1924 edition. Markings by Paine and DeVoto have been especially problematic. Paine’s handwriting can be difficult to distinguish from Clemens’s, especially in small verbal changes or punctuation. But he clearly renumbered many pages, styled the texts for his publications, annotated and “corrected” them in large and small ways, and occasionally scissored out passages he intended to suppress. Paine’s blue crayon printer’s-copy page numbers and his typesetter’s galley numbers (in plain lead pencil) for his 1924 edition are scattered throughout, and many typescript pages are smudged with printer’s ink and pierced by a spindle hole, both signs that they literally served as setting copy. In preparing copy for Mark Twain in Eruption, DeVoto also wrote (in pencil) on the original typescript pages. He inscribed editorial notes to himself, to Rosamond Chapman, and to his typist, Henry Beck; he struck through whole sections of text; and he was so irritated by the typed punctuation that he canceled much of it, penciling through the offending marks so emphatically that it is sometimes difficult to recover the original reading.
THE CRITICAL TEXT
Authorial intention
This edition of the Autobiography of Mark Twain offers the reader an unmodernized, critically constructed text, both of the preliminary manuscripts and dictations and of the final text that Clemens intended his “heirs and assigns” to publish after his death. The editorial construction adheres to his intention as it is manifest in the most authoritative documents available, or can be reliably inferred from them, and aims at presenting the texts exactly as he would have published them, so far as that is possible—that is, as they were when he ceased to make changes in them. Except for the revisions the author made for magazine publication (discussed below), all of his revisions and corrections are adopted, whether inscribed on a surviving typescript or detected by collation when the revised typescript is missing. Every decision to adopt (or not) is reported in the Textual Commentaries at MTPO, which also record every alteration that the editors have made in the source texts.2
