Autobiography of Mark Twain (2 page)

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Preliminary Manuscripts and Dictations, 1870–1905

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARK TWAIN

Explanatory Notes

Appendixes

Samuel L. Clemens: A Brief Chronology

Family Biographies

Speech at the Seventieth Birthday Dinner, 5 December 1905

Speech at The Players, 3 January 1906

Previous Publication

Note on the Text

Word Division in This Volume

References

Index

Photographs

Except for the subtitle “Random Extracts from It” (which Clemens himself enclosed in brackets), bracketed titles have been editorially supplied for works that Clemens left untitled.

Intensive editorial work on the
Autobiography of Mark Twain
began some six years ago and will continue for several more years. But the collective skills and expertise that have allowed us to solve the daunting problems posed by this manuscript came gradually into existence over four decades of editorial work on Mark Twain. We therefore thank the National Endowment for the Humanities, an independent federal agency, both for its three most recent outright and matching grants over the last six years, and for its patient, generous, and uninterrupted support of the Mark Twain Project since 1966. At the same time and with the same fervor, we thank the Koret Foundation for its recent generous grant in support of editorial and production work on the
Autobiography
, all of which has gone (or will go) to satisfy the matching component of the Endowment’s recent grants to the Project.

For additional continuing support of work on the
Autobiography
and for help in acquiring important original documents for the Mark Twain Papers, we thank those institutions and individuals listed on page ix. The Mark Twain Project has been sustained over the years in so many ways by so many people that we are obliged, with regret, to thank them as one large group rather than by individual names. For donations to sustain our work, ranging from five dollars to five million dollars, we here thank all our loyal and generous supporters. Without their support, the Project would long ago have ceased to exist, and would certainly not be completing work on the
Autobiography
at this time.

Recent efforts have been made to create an endowment to support the present and future work of the Mark Twain Project, and we want to acknowledge those efforts here. First and foremost we thank all the members of the University of California, Berkeley, Class of 1958, led by Roger and Jeane Samuelsen, Edward H. Peterson, and Don and Bitsy Kosovac, who recently created an endowment of $1 million dedicated to the Mark Twain Project. We thank each and every member of the Class for their far-seeing wisdom and generosity. To that endowment fund we may now add, with renewed gratitude, contributions from the estate of Phyllis R. Bogue and the estate of Peter K. Oppenheim.

Instrumental in all recent fund-raising for the Project has been the Mark Twain Luncheon Club, organized ten years ago by Ira Michael Heyman, Watson M. (Mac) Laetsch, and Robert Middlekauff. Their leadership has been unflagging and indispensable, and we thank them for it and for a thousand other forms of help. We also thank all of the Club’s nearly one hundred members for their loyal financial and moral support of the Project, and on their behalf we extend thanks to the several dozen speakers who have agreed to address the Luncheon Club members over the years. Our thanks also go to Dave Duer, director of development in the Berkeley University Library, for his continuing wise and judicious counsel, and for his unprecedented
efforts to raise financial support for the Project. Last but not least we want to thank the Berkeley campus as a whole for granting the Project relief from indirect costs on its several grants from the Endowment. We are grateful for this and all other forms of support from our home institution.