Works of Mark Twain – serie

The volume includes Mark Twain's previously published philosophical writing. Fictional pieces (even some which develop arguments contained here) are ordinarily excluded, as are other works appropriate to different volumes in this edition. However, "Letter from the Recording Angel," "The Five Boons of Life," and "Letters from the Earth," although they are in a strict sense fictional, have been judged more relevant to the present volume that to the volumes of short fiction. "Things a Scotsman Wants to Know," previously unpublished, is included by agreement with the editor of The Mark Twain Papers, as being especially relevant to themes of this volume. Other unpublished items appear as supplements because of their close relation to What Is Man?, Christian Science, and " 'The Turning Point of My Life.' " The two works that break off with unfinished sentences, "Bible Teaching and Religious Practice" and the introductory section of "Letters from the Earth," were abandoned by the author or else their endings have been lost. The order of works in this volume is according to date of publication or, for those unpublished during the author's lifetime, date of composition.For works published during his lifetime, dates of first publication appear in roman type below titles; for works first published after his death, date are in italics and indicate time of composition.

This is a small sampling of Mark Twain's life-long fulminations against the editors, printers, and proofreaders who, subtly or grossly, altered his work and shrouded his intentions as they transmitted his writing from manuscript to type. Through unauthorized changes and inadvertent errors, Mark Twain's first publishers brought out texts full of thousands of errors in form and content. Later publishers then based their reprints on these corrupt editions and added errors of their own. It is the aim of the Iowa-California edition to strip away this accretion of error and present texts faithful to the author's intention. By comparing all the life-time version of Mark Twain's works, the editors are able to isolate the author's revisions from the printers and publishers' changes. The record of this comparison supplies not only the evidence for editorial decisions, but also the history of the author's efforts to shape his work. In addition, these volumes include previously uncollected work, work that has long been out of print, and such unpublished writing as related drafts, working notes, and marginalia.The texts are established at the Center for Textual Studies at the University of Iowa or at the Mark Twain Papers in The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley. The costs for editorial work have been met by generous support from the Editing Program of the National Endowment for the Humanities, an independent federal agency, and other institutional and private donors. The edition is published by the University of California Press with financial assistance from the Graduate College at the University of Iowa. All volumes are submitted to the Center for Editions of american Authors, or to its successor, the Committee for Scholarly Editions, for examination and approval

This is a small sampling of Mark Twain's life-long fulminations against the editors, printers, and proofreaders who, subtly or grossly, altered his work and shrouded his intentions as they transmitted his writing from manuscript to type. Through unauthorized changes and inadvertent erros, Mark Twain's first publishers brought out texts full of thousands of errors in form and content. Later publishers then based their reprints on these corrupt editions and added errors of their own. It is the aim of the Iowa-California edition to strip away this accretion of error and present texts faithful to the author's intention. By comparing all the life-time versions of Mark Twain's works, the editors are able to isolate the author's revisions from the printer's and publishers' changes. The record of this comparison supplies not only the evidence for editorial decisions, but also the history of the author's efforts to shape his work. In addition, these volumes included previously uncollected work, work that has long been out of print, and such unpublished writing as related drafts, working notes, and marginalia.The texts are established at the Center for Textual Studies at the University of Iowa or at the Mark Twain Papers in The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley.

From the Introduction: The second volume of this collection follows Clemens from his first days as a resident journalist in California, late in May 1864, through the end of his first full year as a California resident, 1865. In this twenty-month period he wrote most of his work for the San Francisco Golden Era, the Morning Call, the Dramatic Chronicle, and the Californian. He began to publish somewhat more regularly in eastern journals, like the New York Saturday Press and the Weekly Review, and toward the end of the period he started a long assignment as the daily correspondent from San Francisco to the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise. In November 1865 he published "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog" [no. 119] and by the beginning of 1866 the news of its success with eastern readers had begun to filter back to California. He was on the verge of national and international fame as a humorist.

The text of this new scholarly edition of "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" is the first ever to be based on Mark Twain's complete, original manuscript - including its first 665 pages, which had been lost for over a hundred years when they turned up in 1990 in a Los Angeles attic. The text has been thoroughly re-edited using this manuscript, restoring thousands of details of wording, spelling, and punctuation which had been corrupted by Mark Twain's typist, typesetters, and proofreaders. It includes all of the 174 first edition illustrations by Edward Windsor Kemble, which the author called 'most rattling good'. The editorial matter is extraordinarily rich. A new introduction tells the story of how Mark Twain's book was written, edited, published, and received, and spells out in detail the effect of the newly discovered manuscript on the text. Included are revised and updated maps of the Mississippi River valley, explanatory notes, glossary, and several documentary appendixes such as Twain's literary working notes, facsimile manuscript pages, facsimile reproductions of the author's revisions for his public reading tours, and contemporary advertisements and announcements.Also included are a description of the manuscript and all texts used in preparing this edition and complete lists of the author's revisions. The acclaimed 2001 "Mark Twain Library Edition" (Library edition books are intended for general readers) was drawn from this comprehensive new scholarly edition in the "Works of Mark Twain" series.

This critical edition publishes—for the first time anywhere—the original manuscript and revised versions of Pudd’nhead Wilson.Mark Twain's story of the antebellum South, first published in 1894, continues to prompt conversations about race and the dire legacy of American slavery. At its heart is Roxy, a mixed-race woman enslaved to a wealthy Missouri family. To save her infant son (whose father was white) from being "sold down the river," Roxy switches him in the cradle with her master's son, setting in motion a train of ironic and bitter events. With its mixture of farce, social commentary, tragedy, and satire, Pudd'nhead Wilson has come to be one of Mark Twain's most-read and most-studied works.But few have read the original Pudd'nhead Wilson. The text familiar since 1894, as editor Benjamin Griffin shows, was heavily edited and censored—first by the author himself under pressure from family and friends, then by his publishers. Now the Mark Twain Project makes available the full text of the Morgan Library manuscript (the original version), together with a critical text of the revised version, stripped of the changes imposed by Mark Twain's editors and publishers—two fascinating ways to encounter this troubled and troubling novel.