The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Letters Of Mark Twain, Complete
by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

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Title: The Letters Of Mark Twain, Complete

Author: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

Last Updated: February 18, 2009
Release Date: August 21, 2006 [EBook #3199]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LETTERS OF MARK TWAIN, ***

Produced by David Widger

MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS--1853-1910

ARRANGED WITH COMMENT BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE

VOLUME I-VI, COMPLETE

By Mark Twain

*****

MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS--1853-1866

ARRANGED WITH COMMENT BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE

VOLUME I

By Mark Twain

FOREWORD

Nowhere is the human being more truly revealed than in his letters. Not
in literary letters--prepared with care, and the thought of possible
publication--but in those letters wrought out of the press of
circumstances, and with no idea of print in mind. A collection of such
documents, written by one whose life has become of interest to mankind
at large, has a value quite aside from literature, in that it reflects
in some degree at least the soul of the writer.

The letters of Mark Twain are peculiarly of the revealing sort. He was a
man of few restraints and of no affectations. In his correspondence,
as in his talk, he spoke what was in his mind, untrammeled by literary
conventions.

Necessarily such a collection does not constitute a detailed life story,
but is supplementary to it. An extended biography of Mark Twain has
already been published. His letters are here gathered for those who
wish to pursue the subject somewhat more exhaustively from the strictly
personal side. Selections from this correspondence were used in the
biography mentioned. Most of these are here reprinted in the belief
that an owner of the "Letters" will wish the collection to be reasonably
complete.

[Etext Editor's Note: A. B. Paine considers this compendium
a supplement to his "Mark Twain, A Biography", I have
arranged the volumes of the "Letters" to correspond as
closely as possible with the dates of the Project Gutenberg
six volumes of the "Biography". D.W.]

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