"You ought to see Livy & me, now-a-days—you never saw such a serenely satisfied couple of doves in all your life. I spent Jan 1, 2, 3 & 5 there, & left at 8 last night. With my vile temper & variable moods, it seems an incomprehensible miracle that we two have been right together in the same house half the time for a year & a half, & yet have never had a cross word, or a lover's 'tiff,' or a pouting spell, or a misunderstanding, or the faintest shadow of a jealous suspicion. Now isn't that absolutely wonderful? Could I have had such an experience with any other girl on earth? I am perfectly certain I could not. . . . We are to be married on Feb. 2d."

So begins Volume 4 of the letters, with Samuel Clemens anticipating his wedding to Olivia L. Langdon. The 338 letters in this volume document the first two years of a loving marriage that would last more than thirty years. They recount, in Clemens's own inimitable voice, a tumultuous time: a growing international fame, the birth of a sickly first child, and the near-fatal illness of his wife.

At the beginning of 1870, fresh from the success of The Innocents Abroad, Clemens is on "the long agony" of a lecture tour and planning to settle in Buffalo as editor of the Express. By the end of 1871, he has moved to Hartford and is again on tour, anticipating the publication of Roughing It and the birth of his second child. The intervening letters show Clemens bursting with literary ideas, business schemes, and inventions, and they show him erupting with frustration, anger, and grief, but more often with dazzling humor and surprising self-revelation. In addition to Roughing It, Clemens wrote some enduringly popular short pieces during this period, but he saved some of his best writing for private letters, many of which are published here for the first time.

Victor Fischer, Michael B. Frank, and Lin Salamo are editors with the Mark Twain Project at The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

"No writer has come closer to embodying, in his own history, the contemporary history of his nation. . . . It is from the letters in this copious and munificent edition . . . that one gets the full sprawl and multitudinousness of the man and his extraordinary knack of speaking for America."—Times Literary Supplement

"As this edition of letters continues . . . one's admiration only increases. So far as an educated eye can judge, there is simply nothing missing from [Letters 3] and one turns to these letter volumes with a confidence in their editorial authority that is unfortunately rare."—Nineteenth-Century Literature



"These days the savvy consumer first of all checks out the specified contents of a package: here, the text of three hundred and thirty-eight more letters by Mark Twain, more than half of them previously unpublished, as well as most of or else the complete text from the other side of the correspondence; an astonishingly detailed, sometimes brilliantly speculative annotation including the recovery, for example, of not just the identity but a life-sketch of persons obscure even in their own times . . .

"Those who already know the grand scenario will find much fresh detail. . . . But the obvious questions look ahead. In their too seldom private life can gentle Olivia ride the whirlwind that her husband continually stirs up? Can she manage a household with several servants despite his slam-bang help? Is she sturdy enough for a second child so soon? Will sickly Langdon Clemens grow into health and let us observe the acclaimed interpreter of boyhood interacting with a son? What kind of sensibly ample house will the Clemenses build in sedate Nook Farm? As for the humorist-author, can the book he is jerry-building sell anywhere near so well as he almost desperately counts on? Meanwhile, can he meet the deadlines he keeps extending? Will he sidetrack too much energy into enterprises that his unique talents do not suit? The next volume of letters cannot come too soon for me."—Louis J. Budd, Mississippi Quarterly



"The rich variety of Mark Twain's Letters, Volume 4, 1870-1871 . . . will bedazzle even those scholars who think they are already familiar with virtually all details of Twain's biography."—Alan Gribben, American Literary Scholarship

"[This] handsome, cloth-bound fourth volume of Mark Twain's Letters (University of California Press) is a winning combination of every drib, drab, and pre-postal droplet to glisten at the nib of the great man's pen between 1870 and 1871. . . . a copious and colorful edition."—Andrew Berg, Detour Magazine

"This is a work of comprehensive scholarship."—AB Bookman's Weekly

"Have you ever spent a rainy afternoon in a family attic carefully untying bundles of letters and relishing the reading of everyday events forgotten? Then you can imagine the pleasure the new book, 'Mark Twain's Letters, Volume 4, 1870-1871" is bringing to scholars who study the author and his works."—Salle E. Richards, Elmira Star-Gazette

"an absorbing and accurate picture of one of the great American humorists of the 19th century."—Zel Levin, Cape Codder

Mark Twain Project Online