Nowhere is the human being more truly revealed than in his letters. Not
in literary letters--prepared with care, and the thought of possible
publication--but in those letters wrought out of the press of
circumstances, and with no idea of print in mind. A collection of such
documents, written by one whose life has become of interest to mankind
at large, has a value quite aside from literature, in that it reflects
in some degree at least the soul of the writer.
The letters of Mark Twain are peculiarly of the revealing sort. He was a
man of few restraints and of no affectations. In his correspondence,
as in his talk, he spoke what was in his mind, untrammeled by literary
conventions.
Necessarily such a collection does not constitute a detailed life story,
but is supplementary to it. An extended biography of Mark Twain has
already been published. His letters are here gathered for those who
wish to pursue the subject somewhat more exhaustively from the strictly
personal side. Selections from this correspondence were used in the
biography mentioned. Most of these are here reprinted in the belief
that an owner of the “Letters” will wish the collection to be reasonably
complete.
[Etext Editor's Note: A. B. Paine considers this compendium
a supplement to his “Mark Twain, A Biography”, I have
arranged the volumes of the “Letters” to correspond as
closely as possible with the dates of the Project Gutenberg
six volumes of the “Biography”. D.W.]