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The Selected Letters of Mark Twain
Letters written by Twain between his eighteenth year and his death provide a revealing, multifaceted self-portrait of the private man and the public celebrity and wry observations about contemporary personalities and events
328 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1982
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About the author
Mark Twain
8,967 books18.7k followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist and essayist. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced," with William Faulkner calling him "the father of American literature." His novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), with the latter often called the "Great American Novel." Twain also wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) and Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894), and co-wrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) with Charles Dudley Warner.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist and essayist. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced," with William Faulkner calling him "the father of American literature." His novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), with the latter often called the "Great American Novel." Twain also wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) and Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894), and co-wrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) with Charles Dudley Warner.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 4, 2024
I have such mixed feelings about these selected letters. Mark Twain was funny, even in his personal correspondence to his mother, sister, and friends. He could turn a phrase and make you laugh or see a landscape or a situation. I would reread those portions. It would've been entertaining to have him as a pen pal.
But he was also racist as a product of his times, skeptical, cynical, and sometimes devoid of hope. I am taking a star away for racism. Others may understandably want to take more away. (I think I could avoid the references if I reread this; time will tell.)
As he grew older, he ached for all those loved ones who died before him, and that is painful to read, but natural enough. He even began to grieve when people got married, for the death and grief that would eventually separate them.
I loved his stories of struggling with his boat upriver through the ice on the Mississippi, the story of the man who saved his friends from death with a runaway horse and an impossible curve, just about any story that he was telling.
The letters he wrote when he was angry but never mailed were funny.
I loved his friendship with General Grant, Rudyard Kipling, and various other dignitaries. He didn't like Sir Walter Scott, Jane Austen, and Edgar Allen Poe's writings, but I've enjoyed Scott & Austen. I never really liked reading Poe, either, except perhaps for "The Raven."
Favorite quotes:
"... the Cason, a river, 20 yards wide, knee-deep, and so villainously rapid and crooked that it looks like it had wandered into the country without intending it and had run about in a bewildered way and got lost in its hurry to get out again before some thirsty man can along and drank it up."
"Some people are malicious enough to think that if the devil were set at liberty and told to confine himself to Nevada Territory that he would come here and look sadly around awhile and then get homesick and go back to hell again."
"If you two boys were to land here on that pleasant occasion, we would make you right royally welcome."
"... of all the swarms that come every day to gaze upon them [portraits] none go away that are not softened and humbled and made more resigned to the will of God. If I had yours to put up alongside of them I believe the combination would bring more souls to earnest reflection and ultimate conviction of their lost condition that any other kind of warning would."
"He that waiteth for all men to be satisfied with his plan, let him seek eternal life, for he shall need it."
"It is not parties that make or save countries or that build them to greatness - it is clean men, clean ordinary citizens, rank and file, the masses. Clean masses are not made by individuals standing back till the rest become clean."
"And so I think that regulation is the invention of one of those people - as a rule, early stricken of God, intellectually - the departmental interpreters of the laws, in Washington. They can always be depended on to take any reasonably good law and interpret the common sense all out of it. They can be depended on, every time, to defeat a good law and make it inoperative - yes and utterly grotesque too, mere matter for laughter and derision."
"I now perceive why all men are the deadly and uncompromising enemies of the rattlesnake: it is merely because the rattlesnake has not speech."
"... they [his daughters] put up with the worst that befalls with heroic endurance that resembles contentment."
"Amusement is a good preparation for study and a good healer of fatigue after it."
"Your skull was not made to put ideas in, it was made to throw potatoes at." - from an unmailed letter
About his short time in the Confederate army, from which he went AWOL, "You [General Howard] ought not to say sarcastic things about my 'fighting on the other side.' General Grant did not act like that. General Grant paid me compliments. He bracketed me with Zenophon - it is there in his Memoirs for anybody to read. He said if all the Confederate soldiers had followed my example and adopted my military arts he could never have caught enough of them in a bunch to inconvenience the Rebellion. General Grant was a fair man and recognized my worth. But you are prejudiced, and you have hurt my feelings."
"The mansion is 10 x 12, with a 'domestic' roof. Yesterday it rained, the first shower for five months. 'Domestic,' it appears to me, is not waterproof. We went outside to keep from getting wet. Dan makes the bed when it is his turn to do it, and when it is my turn I don't, you know. The dog is not a good hunter and eh isn't worth shucks to watch but he scratches up the dirt floor of the cabin and catches flies and makes himself generally useful in the way of washing dishes. Dan gets up first in the morning and makes a fire, and I get up last and sit by it while he cooks breakfast. We have a cold lunch at noon and I cook supper - very much against my will. However, one must have one good meal a day, and if I were to live on Dan's abominable cookery I should lose my appetite, you know."
"Dan attended Dr. Chorpenning's funeral yesterday and he felt as though he ought to wear a white shirt and we had a jolly good time finding such an article. We turned over all our traps and he found one at last but I shall always think it was suffering from yellow fever. He also found an old black coat, greasy and wrinkled to that degree that it appeared to have been quilted at some time or other. In this gorgeous costume he attended the funeral. And when he returned, his own dog drove him away from the cabin, not recognizing him. This is true."
"Therefore, I cordially welcome you to your old-remembered homes and your long-deserted firesides, and close this screed with the sincere hope that your visit here will be a happy one and not embittered by the sorrowful surprises that absence and lapse of years are wont to prepare for wanderers; surprises which come in the form of old friends missed from their places; silence where familiar voices should be; the young grown old; change and decay everywhere; home a delusion and a disappointment; strangers at hearthstone; sorrow where gladness was; tears for laughter; the melancholy pomp of death where the grace of life has been!"
Joe Twichell said of Mark Twain: "There is nothing he so delights in as a swift, strong stream. You can hardly get him to leave one when once he is within the influence of its fascinations."
But he was also racist as a product of his times, skeptical, cynical, and sometimes devoid of hope. I am taking a star away for racism. Others may understandably want to take more away. (I think I could avoid the references if I reread this; time will tell.)
As he grew older, he ached for all those loved ones who died before him, and that is painful to read, but natural enough. He even began to grieve when people got married, for the death and grief that would eventually separate them.
I loved his stories of struggling with his boat upriver through the ice on the Mississippi, the story of the man who saved his friends from death with a runaway horse and an impossible curve, just about any story that he was telling.
The letters he wrote when he was angry but never mailed were funny.
I loved his friendship with General Grant, Rudyard Kipling, and various other dignitaries. He didn't like Sir Walter Scott, Jane Austen, and Edgar Allen Poe's writings, but I've enjoyed Scott & Austen. I never really liked reading Poe, either, except perhaps for "The Raven."
Favorite quotes:
"... the Cason, a river, 20 yards wide, knee-deep, and so villainously rapid and crooked that it looks like it had wandered into the country without intending it and had run about in a bewildered way and got lost in its hurry to get out again before some thirsty man can along and drank it up."
"Some people are malicious enough to think that if the devil were set at liberty and told to confine himself to Nevada Territory that he would come here and look sadly around awhile and then get homesick and go back to hell again."
"If you two boys were to land here on that pleasant occasion, we would make you right royally welcome."
"... of all the swarms that come every day to gaze upon them [portraits] none go away that are not softened and humbled and made more resigned to the will of God. If I had yours to put up alongside of them I believe the combination would bring more souls to earnest reflection and ultimate conviction of their lost condition that any other kind of warning would."
"He that waiteth for all men to be satisfied with his plan, let him seek eternal life, for he shall need it."
"It is not parties that make or save countries or that build them to greatness - it is clean men, clean ordinary citizens, rank and file, the masses. Clean masses are not made by individuals standing back till the rest become clean."
"And so I think that regulation is the invention of one of those people - as a rule, early stricken of God, intellectually - the departmental interpreters of the laws, in Washington. They can always be depended on to take any reasonably good law and interpret the common sense all out of it. They can be depended on, every time, to defeat a good law and make it inoperative - yes and utterly grotesque too, mere matter for laughter and derision."
"I now perceive why all men are the deadly and uncompromising enemies of the rattlesnake: it is merely because the rattlesnake has not speech."
"... they [his daughters] put up with the worst that befalls with heroic endurance that resembles contentment."
"Amusement is a good preparation for study and a good healer of fatigue after it."
"Your skull was not made to put ideas in, it was made to throw potatoes at." - from an unmailed letter
About his short time in the Confederate army, from which he went AWOL, "You [General Howard] ought not to say sarcastic things about my 'fighting on the other side.' General Grant did not act like that. General Grant paid me compliments. He bracketed me with Zenophon - it is there in his Memoirs for anybody to read. He said if all the Confederate soldiers had followed my example and adopted my military arts he could never have caught enough of them in a bunch to inconvenience the Rebellion. General Grant was a fair man and recognized my worth. But you are prejudiced, and you have hurt my feelings."
"The mansion is 10 x 12, with a 'domestic' roof. Yesterday it rained, the first shower for five months. 'Domestic,' it appears to me, is not waterproof. We went outside to keep from getting wet. Dan makes the bed when it is his turn to do it, and when it is my turn I don't, you know. The dog is not a good hunter and eh isn't worth shucks to watch but he scratches up the dirt floor of the cabin and catches flies and makes himself generally useful in the way of washing dishes. Dan gets up first in the morning and makes a fire, and I get up last and sit by it while he cooks breakfast. We have a cold lunch at noon and I cook supper - very much against my will. However, one must have one good meal a day, and if I were to live on Dan's abominable cookery I should lose my appetite, you know."
"Dan attended Dr. Chorpenning's funeral yesterday and he felt as though he ought to wear a white shirt and we had a jolly good time finding such an article. We turned over all our traps and he found one at last but I shall always think it was suffering from yellow fever. He also found an old black coat, greasy and wrinkled to that degree that it appeared to have been quilted at some time or other. In this gorgeous costume he attended the funeral. And when he returned, his own dog drove him away from the cabin, not recognizing him. This is true."
"Therefore, I cordially welcome you to your old-remembered homes and your long-deserted firesides, and close this screed with the sincere hope that your visit here will be a happy one and not embittered by the sorrowful surprises that absence and lapse of years are wont to prepare for wanderers; surprises which come in the form of old friends missed from their places; silence where familiar voices should be; the young grown old; change and decay everywhere; home a delusion and a disappointment; strangers at hearthstone; sorrow where gladness was; tears for laughter; the melancholy pomp of death where the grace of life has been!"
Joe Twichell said of Mark Twain: "There is nothing he so delights in as a swift, strong stream. You can hardly get him to leave one when once he is within the influence of its fascinations."
July 5, 2018
I found this tedious. Mostly my fault and the difference in our ages.
April 29, 2014
The Selected Letters of Mark Twain provides transcriptions of Twain’s letters along editorial explanations of the circumstances in which they were written.
I found this entire collection embarrassing – not to Mark but to me. I can’t remember the last time I actually took a pen and wrote a complete letter, with a real point, with perfect grammar, spelling etc. Twain’s letters illustrate how once letter writing was an art. Each one has a beginning, a story, a climax and a denouement.
I wish I had this skill…but then again, it may take effort to write a “real” letter. In that case, never mind – I will just send mindless e-mails with my own name misspelled, prepositions dangling all over the place and some pithy platitude that I cut and pasted from some dubious source.
However if you are articulate and do not have to live with the shame that I had to endure upon reading this book, I can recommend it.
I found this entire collection embarrassing – not to Mark but to me. I can’t remember the last time I actually took a pen and wrote a complete letter, with a real point, with perfect grammar, spelling etc. Twain’s letters illustrate how once letter writing was an art. Each one has a beginning, a story, a climax and a denouement.
I wish I had this skill…but then again, it may take effort to write a “real” letter. In that case, never mind – I will just send mindless e-mails with my own name misspelled, prepositions dangling all over the place and some pithy platitude that I cut and pasted from some dubious source.
However if you are articulate and do not have to live with the shame that I had to endure upon reading this book, I can recommend it.
November 14, 2012
There is so much richness in a personal letter, and I enjoy Twain's letters in multiple dimensions: as beautiful correspondence in itself, for the autobiographical sketches they offer as Clemens ages from almost-eighteen to the last months of his life; and for the man's reflections on literature and American history as it was happening. This selection is thoroughly enjoyable.
Read
January 27, 2011Much of this is in the new autobiography but this is a biography of Twain and Clemens from another viewpoint. Very worthwhile and entertaining.
August 12, 2011
I loved this personal glimpse into Mark Twains life through letters. It allowed me to discover things about him that I had not known before.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews