What is Autobiography of Mark Twain?
{{italictitle}} [[Image:Twain looking out a window.jpg|right|thumb|300px]] [[Image:Bancroft Library.jpg|right|thumb|250px|Bancroft Library, Sept. 2010]] The '''''Autobiography of Mark Twain''''' or ''Mark Twain’s Autobiography'' is a book by [[Mark Twain]], (the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens). It has many stories about his life in it. Twain did not write and publish the book in the usual way. He told the stories and they were written down for him. The book was published in November 2010, one hundred years after his death. == Documents and preparation == According to Harriet Smith, editor of the book, some of the [[manuscript]]s of Twain’s [[autobiography]] are [[writing|handwritten]] by him but most are [[transcription (linguistics)|transcripts]] of what he said. These were created on [[typewriter]]s by helpers such as his [[secretary|secretaries]] and his youngest daughter. There are three versions of much of the autobiography, including the original. There was a copy used to send 25 sections of the book, one at a time, to be published in ''[[North American Review]]''. Then a copy was used for Albert Paine’s 1924 edition of the book. Clemens proofread them all. Into his [[voice|vocal]] [[Voice recorder|dictations]], he often inserted earlier manuscripts he wrote and also letters, newspaper clippings and other [[document]]s. In Harriet Smith’s 2010 edition, Clemens instructions are not always followed. For example, she did not insert his article about the survivors of the sunken ship in his February 20, 1906 dictation. Also, she did not include in the January 12, 1906 dictation the [[illustration|illustrated]] [[magazine]] about his 70th birthday dinner. Mistakes that were made are just pointed out in the book’s explanatory notes instead of being changed to be correct. She has made some changes to bad spelling and adding missing [[preposition]]s to fix the [[grammar]]. She does not correct grammar when the text would lose the spoken style. For example, she believes “. . . the world’s sympathy and comp