Chapters from My Autobiography - Mark Twain

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Résumé :
Mark Twain (or Samuel Clemens) intended for his autobiography to be published long after he died. He felt that he couldn't be honest about his experiences and contemporaries if he was worried about the reaction of others. However, in 1906 he agreed to publish selections from the autobiography in the North American Review, from September 1906 through December 1907. The twenty-five Chapters from My Autobiography have been brought together in this book. At the beginning of each chapter is the following preface: Prefatory Note -- Mr. Clemens began to write his autobiography many years ago, and he continues to add to it day by day. It was his original intention to permit no publication of his memoirs until after his death; but, after leaving Pier No. 70, he concluded that a considerable portion might now suitably be given to the public. It is that portion, garnered from the quarter-million of words already written, which will appear in this Review during the coming year. No part of the autobiography will be published in book form during the lifetime of the author. -- Editor N. A. R. Eventually the full 'Autobiography of Mark Twain' was published after his death. It is more a lengthy set of anecdotes and ruminations than a traditional autobiography, published in four volumes and comprises some half a million words.

Biographie:
Mark Twain (30 November 1835- 21 April 1910) was born in Florida, United States. He was a Humorist, author, and lecturer. He grew up in Hannibal and later moved to California. In a California mining camp, he heard the story that he published in 1865 and made popular as the title story of his first novel, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and Other Sketches, in 1867. From his humorous stories, The Innocents Abroad (1869) and Roughing It in 1872, to his appearance as a riverboat captain in Life on the Mississippi in 1883, through his adventure stories of childhood, he got a worldwide audience, mainly for Tom Sawyer (1876) and Huckleberry Finn (1885), known as the masterpieces of American fiction. The ironic A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court in 1889. His eldest daughter passed away in 1896, his wife in 1904, and another daughter in 1909. He expressed his depression about the human character in such late works as the after-death published Letters from the Earth (1962).