Audiobook · read by volunteers
Life on the Mississippi
Mark Twain (1835–1910)
Read by John Greenman · 64 chapters · 14 h 47
About the book
Before the Civil War, the Mississippi was the great highway of America, and the men who piloted its steamboats were proud and powerful. Mark Twain was one of them. In this memoir he remembers his boyhood in a river town, his dream of becoming a pilot, the long apprenticeship in which he had to learn every bend, sandbar and snag of twelve hundred miles of shifting water, and the glory of the profession. Later he returns to the river as a famous author and finds it changed. Part history, part reminiscence, part tall tale, the book is a loving portrait of a vanished world and one of Twain's most vivid works. Sixty-four chapters, almost fifteen hours, and a river that flows through every page.
Introduction
Mark Twain, the pen name of Samuel Clemens, lived from 1835 to 1910. His name itself comes from the river: it is a call used by riverboat men to mark the depth of the water. Born in Missouri, he grew up in the town of Hannibal on the Mississippi, and worked as a steamboat pilot before the Civil War ended river traffic.
Life on the Mississippi was published in 1883. Part of it is a memoir of Twain's years as a steamboat pilot on the river before the Civil War. The first part is a history of the river and a recollection of his training under an experienced pilot. The second part describes a journey Twain made years later, travelling up and down the river as a celebrated author. Along the way he tells anecdotes, mocks local customs, and reflects on how the railroads and the war had changed the river.
The book mixes memory with invention, and Twain was not shy about exaggeration. It is nonetheless a valuable portrait of the age, and it shows the habits of observation that also fed Huckleberry Finn.
The recording was made by a LibriVox volunteer. It is divided into sixty-four chapters, with titles such as The River and its History and The Boys' Ambition, and lasts nearly fifteen hours. Why listen? Because Twain's voice, humorous, shrewd and nostalgic, is at its most relaxed here. The book is easy to enter, easy to dip into, and full of memorable scenes of life on a great American river.
Public domain
Mark Twain died in 1910: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text