Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume I

Clara Jean Livy and Susy 1880s - Mark Twain’s wife and daughters

Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume I is a book written by Mark Twain in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He dictated much of the book to his secretaries. The dictations are not in chronological order but rather in the order he found interesting while dictating. He grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, became a typesetter and then a river boat pilot. After disserting the Hannibal Militia at the outbreak of the Civil War, he became an undersecretary of state in the Nevada territory, hired by his older brother. He then fled a duel and moved to San Francisco, where he began writing under the pseudonym, Mark Twain, instead of his read name, Sam Clemens. He was assigned to write travelogues in Hawaii, then began lecturing in the American West about Hawaii. While traveling around the world on another traveler assignment, he met his brother-in-law and then his wife. He moved to Connecticut to be near his book publisher, and began writing novels after he got married. He wrote Tom Sawyer and other books. He and his wife had four children. Their son died when a baby. His two of his daughters, one of high fever, the other years later of epilepsy which began about the same time her sister died. One of his daughters lived into the 1960s and left his Autobiography and his other personal papers to the University of California, Berkeley, near San Francisco. The Mark Twain Project published the book about 100 years after Mark Twain died.