The Writings of Mark Twain (Volume XVII): Personal Recollections of Joan Of Arc Vol. I by Mark Twain (Hardcover)

Description

Bibliographic Details

Author: Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens)

Title: The Writings of Mark Twain (Volume XVII): Personal Recollections of Joan Of Arc Vol. I

Publisher: The American Publishing Company (1901)

Language: English

Format: Hardcover w/ Deckle Edge – 345 pages

ISBN-10:

ISBN-13:

Item Weight: 1.50 pounds

Dimensions: 8.5 X 5.75" X 1.5" 

Book Condition: (Blue cloth with deckle edge or uncut edge in acceptable condition. Book is unmarked. No torn pages. A few corner creases. Splitting on the front and back inside hinges. A few stains. Light tanning to pages. Binding is loose. Hardcover has wear and some minor staining.) 

Synopsis:

The novel begins with "the Translator's Preface"; then follows a short note entitled "A Peculiarity of Joan of Arc's History" also written by "The Translator". Finally, a foreword is presented by "The Sieur Louis de Conte", who represents an actual person in the life of Joan of Arc but here is fictionalized by the author Mark Twain as a childhood playmate of Joan who later serves as her page and secretary.

The "Translator's Preface" offers an overview of Joan of Arc's life, with heavy praise: "the character of Joan of Arc … occupies the loftiest possible to human attainment". The short "Peculiarity" note explains, first, that many actual details about (the long-ago) life of Joan of Arc are uniquely established and known, having been recorded under oath in court documents that are preserved in the National Archives of France; and, that the "mass of added particulars" here are provided by Sieur de Conte, who, the (fictional) Translator assures us, is reliable.

In the forward Twain's fictional Sieur Louis de Conte presents himself in the year 1492—more than 60 years after Joan of Arc's death in 1431—as writing his "Personal Recollections …" about the life of Joan of Arc and his intimate relation to it: "I was with her from the beginning until the end." Here author Twain assigns his character Sieur de Conte to serve as the first-person narrator of his Joan of Arc story, and perhaps to serve as an alter-ego of the author in that role.

About the Author:

Mark Twain, born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in 1835, left school at age 12. His career encompassed such varied occupations as printer, Mississippi riverboat pilot, journalist, travel writer, and publisher, which furnished him with a wide knowledge of humanity and the perfect grasp of local customs and speech manifested in his writing. It wasn't until The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), that he was recognized by the literary establishment as one of the greatest writers America would ever produce.

Toward the end of his life, plagued by personal tragedy and financial failure, Twain grew more and more cynical and pessimistic. Though his fame continued to widen–Yale and Oxford awarded him honorary degrees–he spent his last years in gloom and desperation, but he lives on in American letters as "the Lincoln of our literature."