Audiobook · read by volunteers
My Mark Twain
William Dean Howells (1837–1920)
Read by Denny Sayers (d. 2015) · 24 chapters · 3 h 41
About the book
When William Dean Howells walked into the offices of the Atlantic Monthly in 1869, he met a visitor he would never forget. Mark Twain had come to thank the young assistant editor for a kind review of Innocents Abroad, and the two men became friends for life. My Mark Twain is Howells's affectionate, observant and often funny portrait of that friendship, written after Twain's death in 1910. He recalls Twain's talk, his clothes, his moods, his generosity and his rages, and he gives a sense of the man behind the public persona. It is a memoir full of anecdotes and sharp insight into American letters. Denny Sayers reads the twenty-four chapters in a little under four hours.
Introduction
William Dean Howells (1837-1920) was an American novelist, critic and editor who played a central role in the literary life of the United States in the late nineteenth century. As editor of the Atlantic Monthly and a regular contributor to other journals, he championed realism in fiction and supported many younger writers. His own novels, such as The Rise of Silas Lapham, were widely read in his day.
My Mark Twain, published in 1910, was written shortly after the death of his friend Samuel Clemens, the writer known as Mark Twain. Howells had known him since 1869, when Twain came to the Atlantic offices to thank him for a favourable notice of The Innocents Abroad. He later became the editor of the magazine, which serialised a number of Twain's works. The book is not a formal biography but a series of reminiscences, and its portrait is affectionate without being uncritical.
This recording has twenty-four chapters and lasts about three and three-quarter hours. It is read by LibriVox volunteer Denny Sayers. For readers of Twain it offers fresh details about his habits and character, and for anyone interested in the literary world of the period it provides a vivid glimpse of the friendships, rivalries and conversations that shaped American writing. The memoir is warm, anecdotal and often very funny, and it makes an excellent companion to the author's own works. The tone of the memoir is that of an old friend remembering, which makes it both entertaining and moving, and a pleasure for anyone who has ever enjoyed the stories of Huckleberry Finn or Tom Sawyer.
Public domain
William Dean Howells died in 1920: 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