*   •  Mark Twain's Civil War *is now in stock at Amazon and other
retailers:  http://bit.do/fccK3


On Tue, Jul 30, 2019 at 3:06 PM Benjamin GRIFFIN <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

>
>
> *Mark Twain’s Civil War*Edited and with an Introduction by Benjamin
> Griffin
> Published by Heyday (Berkeley, Calif.) in collaboration with The Bancroft
> Library
> 192 pp., hardcover
> USD $25.00 / CAD $32.99
>
>
> Twenty years after Appomattox, Mark Twain published “The Private History
> of a Campaign That Failed,” narrating his brief service in the Missouri
> State Guard, an army raised to resist the state’s “invasion” by Union
> troops. Ostensibly the story told what Clemens did (or, as he said, why he
> “didn’t do anything”) in the Civil War; but its mixture of buffoonery and
> earnestness did not meet with universal approval. Having gone public with
> his history as a rebel, a deserter, and (as he claimed) a killer, Mark
> Twain now faced the bitterest, most indignant backlash of his writing
> career. “The Private History” still raises questions, and requires
> questioning, today.
>
> The complex political situation in Missouri in 1861, and Mark Twain’s
> genius for transforming life into fiction, have tended to obstruct
> historical understanding of “The Private History.” In this new edition
> Benjamin Griffin, of the Mark Twain Project, offers a critical text,
> explanatory notes, and a 78-page introduction drawing on the holdings of
> the Mark Twain Papers.
>
> The material published here for the first time includes a substantial and
> virtuosic letter by Clemens, written from New Orleans on the day of
> Louisiana’s secession. Nearly every Mark Twain document quoted, whether
> story, letter or speech, is presented here in a newly edited text based on
> better sources. Also reprinted here for the first time is an earlier text
> of Absalom Grimes’s important memoir of the Ralls County Rangers. The
> process by which Clemens was brought to go public with his Civil War
> history is chronicled, as is his writing of the 1885 story. The text has E.
> W. Kemble’s original illustrations, and the introduction is illustrated
> with photographs from the holdings of the Mark Twain Papers and other
> libraries.
>
>

-- 
Benjamin Griffin
Associate Editor, Mark Twain Project
The Bancroft Library
University of California, Berkeley 94720-6000
(510) 664-4238