Autobiography of Mark Twain

[1] However, it was not until 2010 that the first volume of a comprehensive three-volume collection, compiled and edited by The Mark Twain Project of the Bancroft Library at University of California, Berkeley, was published.

Over the two subsequent years, Twain appeared to have neglected the book, scarcely adding new material; in 1909, following the death of his youngest daughter, Jean Clemens, he proclaimed the project completed.

[3] Twain's papers, including the autobiographical works, were left as part of a trust for the benefit of his surviving daughter, Clara Clemens.

[4] These papers passed through the control of a number of editors, and have been held by the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley since 1971.

[5] Twain wrote instructions for future "editors, heirs, and assigns" in 1904, in which he outlined a century-long plan of publications 25 years apart from each other, with each subsequent release featuring progressively potentially-controversial material.

[8][9] Since Twain’s death in 1910, various editors have attempted to impose order on the entirety of the material by selection and reorganization, producing several different published versions of The Autobiography.

It was compiled by personal friend and literary executor Albert Bigelow Paine, who at the time had exclusive access to Twain's papers.

In 1990, scholar Michael Kiskis edited Mark Twain’s Own Autobiography: The Chapters from the North American Review.

Apart from the transcripts of his autobiographical dictations, Volume 1 also contains introductory material that elucidates the process of the autobiography's composition, in addition to primary documents such as Twain’s initial [incomplete] drafts.

The second volume, published in October 2013, comprises 736 pages and collects dictations spanning eleven months, from April 2, 1906, to February 28, 1907.

[16] The third volume is followed by the 429-page “Ashcroft-Lyon Manuscript”, composed in 1909, in which Twain accuses his secretary, Isabel Lyon, and business manager, Ralph Ashcroft, of purported embezzlement of money from the author and of interference with Twain’s relationship with his youngest daughter, causing her distress.