Mark Twain’s Memoirs to Be Published After Author Imposed 100 Year Wait

(HMG) – American author and humorist Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 — April 21, 1910), well known by his pen name Mark Twain spent the last decade of his life working on his autobiography, but demanded the text not be published until 100 years after his death. That day has finally come and past, as Mark Twain died April 21, 1910. The Tom Sawyer author wrote 5,000 pages of his memoir, and the University of California Berkeley, who has the manuscript stored in a vault, will publish the first volume this November. The eventual trilogy will have half a million words.   Scholars argue over whether the Twain wanted to delay publication to talk freely about religion and politics or speak freely about friends. Twain reportedly makes cruel observations about his supposed friends. It’s also speculated that Twain’s privately held views could have hurt his public legacy as a Great American, according to author Michael Shelden, who this year published Man in White, an account of Twain’s final years:

“He had doubts about God, and in the autobiography, he questions the imperial mission of the US in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. He’s also critical of [Theodore] Roosevelt, and takes the view that patriotism was the last refuge of the scoundrel. Twain also disliked sending Christian missionaries to Africa. He said they had enough business to be getting on with at home: with lynching going on in the South, he thought they should try to convert the heathens down there.”

The dying novelist’s final months were overshadowed by personal upheavals, to which he devoted a 400 page addendum to his scandalous relationship with Isabel Van Kleek Lyon, who became his secretary after his wife died in 1904. She was fired in 1909 after Twain claimed she had “hypnotised” him into giving her the power of attorney over his estate.

While there have been many biographies of  Mark Twain, historians and fans will finally be able to really see what sort of a man Samuel Langhorne Clemens, really was!  Or as he once said: A man’s character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation.

Source: Independent