Chapters from My Autobiography

In these witty, self-aware autobiographical chapters, Mark Twain turns memory into performance, treating his life as a living manuscript that can wander wherever curiosity leads. He rejects the neatness of conventional memoir, inviting digressions, jokes, and even criticism, and then moves from literary self-portrait to vivid recollection. He recalls his first publishing break in 1867 with Charles H. Webb, the comic fame of "The Jumping Frog," and the humiliating rejection of his book by Carleton, later offset by a belated apology and Webb's successful publication. Twain then recounts the hard-won triumph of The Innocents Abroad, delayed by publisher Elisha Bliss's fears but eventually released to enormous profit and success. The chapters also return to boyhood in Hannibal, where a fourteen-year-old Twain, dressed as a bear for a fairy play, unknowingly performs before hidden young ladies in a scene of innocent embarrassment and theatrical exuberance. A later comic tale satirizes literary celebrity itself, as Emerson, Holmes, and Longfellow are recast as rough frontier visitors whose poetry, card games, and swagger collapse into farce. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.