&;I&;ve struck it!&; Mark Twain wrote in a 1904 letter to a friend. &;And I will give it away&;to you. You will never know how much enjoyment you have lost until you get to dictating your autobiography.&;
Thus, after dozens of false starts and hundreds of pages, Twain embarked on his &;Final (and Right) Plan&; for telling the story of his life. His innovative notion&;to &;talk only about the thing which interests you for the moment&;&;meant that his thoughts could range freely. The strict instruction that many of these texts remain unpublished for one hundred years meant that when they came out, he would be &;dead, and unaware, and indifferent,&; and that he was therefore free to speak his &;whole frank mind.&;
The year 2010 marked the one hundredth anniversary of Twain&;s death. In celebration of this important milestone, here, for the first time, is Mark Twain&;s uncensored autobiography, in its entirety, exactly as he left it. This major literary event offers the first of three volumes and presents Mark Twain&;s authentic and unsuppressed voice, brimming with humor, ideas, and opinions, and speaking clearly from the grave, as he intended.
