[N.B.: The following book review was authored by Wesley Britton, who does
not have access to e-mail.  I am merely posting it on his behalf. --Taylor
Roberts]

BOOK REVIEW

     Clemens, Samuel L.  _Roughing It_.  Edited by Harriet Elinor Smith,
     Edgar Marquess Branch, Lin Salamo, and Robert Pack Browning.
     Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.  (The Works of Mark
     Twain, vol. 2.)  Pp. xxxviii, 1072.  300 illus.  Cloth.  $65.00.  ISBN
     0-520-08498-5.

     Reviewed for the Mark Twain Forum by:

          Wesley Britton
          1202 S. Walnut
          Sherman, TX 75090

     Copyright (c) Mark Twain Forum, 1995.  This review may not be
     published or redistributed in any medium without permission.

The new Mark Twain Project edition of _Roughing It_ is a welcome upgrading
of its 1972 edition edited by Franklin Rogers and Paul Baender.  The new
volume not only improves the book's textual accuracy, but adds a wealth of
supplementary material now indispensable for studies of Twain's frontier
humor.  Further, the maps, appendices, and other scholarly apparatus not
only aid in studies of _Roughing It_ itself, but--added with the Mark Twain
Papers earlier editions of Clemens's _Notebooks and Journals: Vol. 1 (1865-
1877)_ (1975), _Early Tales and Sketches_ volumes 1 (1979) and 2 (1981),
and the first volume of _Letters, 1853-1866_ (1988)--the new _Roughing It_
provides much useful insight into Sam Clemens's western experience.
Combined, these editions provide much of the backbone of both primary
sources and scholarly apparatus fundamental to studies focusing on this
formative literary period.

For Robert Hirst, General Editor of the Mark Twain Project,  there were
many reasons to issue a new edition of _Roughing It_.
According to Hirst, who in 1972 was a graduate student assisting Rogers and
Baender, problems with the first edition were immediately obvious.  He
notes there was, and remain, much uncertainty about the reading texts
chosen by the original editorial team.  Baender, Hirst points out, did not
say which copy-texts he adopted, providing no notes or emendations to
explain the 1972 textual choices.  This forced the new team to start from
scratch, creating a fresh volume with detailed textual notes including
sixty-one pages on "Emendations on the Copy-Text and Rejected
Substantives," going well beyond Rogers and Baender's twenty-page
supplements of four related Twain passages in the 1972 edition.
"Everything is there," says Hirst, "in one place.  It might take some
digging to find what you need, but it's all there."

Further, Hirst recalls the original editors deleted the illustrations by
True Williams and others despite Clemens's emphasis on them in letters to
his publisher, Elisha Bliss.  Because of this, according to Hirst, Rogers
and Baender also had to delete two of Clemens's textual references to
specific illustrations.  These passages, and all original illustrations,
are now restored in the new edition.  Other restored material includes
three facsimile pages of the manuscript that Twain's literary executor,
Albert B. Paine, knew about, but which Rogers and Baender deleted without
explanation.

These problems with the 1972 edition, Hirst believes, resulted from rushing
to print what was then the Project's first certified, sealed volume.
During the early '70s, Hirst recalls, the University of Iowa--co-publishers
of the Mark Twain Papers--quickly spent funds to get books on the shelf,
not seeking to create long-term tools.  As a result, some of the early
volumes, such as _Satires and Burlesques_ (1967), were not certified.
Others, like _Letters to His Publishers, 1867-1894_ (1967), were produced
so quickly that much material was missed because no one sought out
overlooked letters.

Another source of confusion resulted from then-editors John Tuckey and John
Gerber's division of projects into thematic categories rather than
chronological collections.  Clemens's early social and philosophic
writings, for example, were not included in _Early Tales and Sketches_ as
different editors carved out separate and scattered turfs, dissecting and
spreading amputated passages throughout various anthologies.  _What is Man?
and Other Philosophical Writings_ (1973), for example, contains early
Virginia City _Territorial Enterprise_ sketches cut out of Twain's letters
to that paper.  Hirst notes Twain's piece "Villagers" was divided and
published in two different volumes because no one at the Mark Twain Project
noticed two fragments went together.  "It took an outsider," he notes, "to
see one fragment picked up where one sentence left off."

The bottom line, Hirst says, was that "we were naive in those days, not
asking questions." _Roughing It_, Hirst believes,  was the worst result
from the haste.  He remembered Rogers claiming Twain had made "subtle
changes" to quotes from _The Book of Mormon_ in _Roughing It_.  Hirst asked
Rogers which edition Twain used.  Rogers didn't know.  After careful
research, Hirst discovered the edition used by Clemens, and found that
Clemens had made no changes at all.  This incident epitomizes the
difference in the two team's editorial policies; the new edition is a
result of all the questions being asked, and when possible, answered in
copious detail.

Much has changed at the Mark Twain Project since 1972, and the new,
expanded _Roughing It_ demonstrates the accumulated experience of the
current editorial team.  The editors, listed above, combine meticulous
attention to the text with the rich notes now associated with the Project's
standard-setting editions beginning with _Notebooks and Journals_.  This
group, and notably Edgar M. Branch, are the most knowledgeable scholars of
Twain's early years ever assembled, giving the new edition an authority no
earlier version can match.

Beyond getting the text and notes right this time (nearly fifty new pages
of explanatory notes have been added to the revised, original 150 pages),
a most important contribution is the 110 page authoritative history of
_Roughing It_'s composition, as definitive as can be expected with extant
materials.  This section charts the composing, editing, and publishing
history of _Roughing It_.  The clear writing of this section sheds much
light on the book's structure, showing how fragments of "seasoned"
remembrances and humorous tales cohered into a readable final form.
Further, the volume reconstructs the lost manuscripts of _Roughing It_,
provides a generous ten-page section of maps (Rogers and Baender published
only three--two unlisted--and tucked them in the back of their volume), and
ends with nearly fifty pages of references.

Other important sections in the new supplements contain material provided
by Orion Clemens to his brother.  Sam Clemens--who had lost or destroyed
much of his own notes, letters, and published items from his western
years--relied on Orion for source material for _Roughing It_, and these
contributions are added in a fourteen-page supplement.

Altogether, the publication of the new edition of _Roughing It_ should
satisfy the often exasperated National Endowment for the Humanities, who
suggest the Project's pace is too slow.  On many levels, the new _Roughing
It_ demonstrates why careful scholarship should not be pushed to premature
conception.  "Do it right the first time," Hirst notes, "or you have to
redo it as we did with _Roughing It_.  If you don't get it right the first
time, it will stay wrong a long time."

Despite threats of severed funding, the Mark Twain Project intends to
continue its high standards evident in _Roughing It_.  Future volumes,
Hirst says, will be released more logically organized than earlier
collections.  The third volume of _Early Tales and Sketches_ (currently in
production), for example, will backtrack to pick up items from 1865 not
included in the earlier collections and will probably be retitled to
indicate its new scope.

Also forthcoming, for the general reader, is a paperback edition of the new
_Roughing It_ with most of the apparatus deleted.  Until then, most readers
can confidently enjoy old copies of the 1972 edition for pleasurable
reading.  For literary scholars and historians, the new edition was worth
the considerable upgrading as it will stand as the authoritative text for
decades to come.  This edition, along with all previous Mark Twain Project
volumes, could be made more useful only by making it available as an
electronic text--especially since such a format makes it possible to add
new references as new information is unearthed.  Until then, no library
should be without the new edition of _Roughing It_, and all serious Twain
scholars will spend useful and happy hours with a classic of humor in its
definitive form.