X201c you had better shove this in the stove x2014 for if we strike a bargain i don x0027 t want any absurd x2018 literary remains x2019 amp x2018 unpublished letters of mark twain x2019 published after i am planted. x201d x2014 letter to orion and mollie clemens, 19 and 20 october 1865 mark twain, born samuel langhorne clemens in 1835, put an astonishing number of words on paper. By the time of his death in 1910, he had published more than thirty books and pamphlets, and easily three or four thousand newspaper and magazine articles. He had also written hundreds of thousands of words that he did not publish, but also did not destroy, expecting many of them to be published after his death.

X201c i will leave it behind, x201d he said of one such essay in 1905, x201c and utter it from the grave. X201d clemens also changed his mind about x201c unpublished letters of mark twain. X201d by the time of his death he had signed a contract to have at least of some of them published. There are, in fact, in hundreds of libraries and private collections around the world, at least 9,0 of his personal and business letters one fifth of the 50,0 letters he is believed to have written with more still being found every week. There are also hundreds of literary manuscripts x2014 books, stories, essays x2014 that he published and then abandoned or gave away. The largest single archive of original documents by and about mark twain is known as the mark twain papers. It contains more than 500 literary manuscripts left unpublished and in various states of completion, including ten or eleven file feet of both handwritten and dictated and mostly unpublished autobiography 46 out of 50 extant notebooks some 17,0 letters to clemens or his family about 3,0 letters by him roughly 100 books from his library as well as uncounted clippings, contracts, bills, checks, photographs, scrapbooks, and other family artifacts.

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Mark twain x0027 s will assigned all his property to his only surviving daughter, clara clemens gabrilowitsch later samossoud , with the important provision that it be held in trust to provide income for her. Mark twain did not distrust his daughter so much as he doubted her ability to withstand avaricious suitors. Clara could not sell the papers or even give them away without the consent of her trustees: she could only transfer ownership through her own will. That is why the core of the mark twain papers remained largely intact forty years after his death, despite having wandered from library to library before coming to rest, in 1949, at the university of california, berkeley. 1910 150 37 clara x0027 s original intention was to bequeath her father x0027 s papers to yale university, in gratitude for the honorary degree yale had given him his first in 18.

But during clara x0027 s lifetime the papers were in the care of four successive editors who served as literary executors or editors for the clemens estate, each with quite different ideas about who should be permitted to see the papers, and which of them if any should be published. albert bigelow paine editor, 1910 150 37 was clemens x0027 s official biographer and literary executor. After clemens x0027 s death, paine worked closely with clara and with harper and brothers to publish a very limited sample from them, and to prevent anyone else from publishing more. Following his magisterial three volume biography 1912 , paine published roughly 500 letters 1915 , about two fifths of the autobiography 1924 , and fewer than half the notebooks 1935. He was a typical victorian editor who felt an obligation to silently alter or remove passages from the texts he did publish, and to block access to the rest when he thought them unworthy of his hero. bernard devoto editor, 1938 150 46 had commented in his preface to mark twain x0027 s america 1932 that, until someone besides paine should see the manuscripts, x201c all criticism of mark twain must be insecure. X201d x201c public benevolence, x201d he added, x201c constrains me to offer the estate my services.

X201d paine replied to this offer in his own preface to a 1935 reprint of the biography, calling it x201c the only humor in an entire book x201d about mark twain. Devoto x0027 s first task was to gather the documents, which had been stored in various bank vaults, the lincoln warehouse in new york, paine x0027 s own residence, and even a trunk of about 100 manuscripts which paine had sent to clara for safekeeping. 1938 150 46 the papers still belonged to clara, but she and the trustees permitted devoto to take them all to room number 98 of widener library at harvard, where he spent the next eight years organizing and studying them x201c dv x201d numbers and x201c paine x201d numbers are still part of the cataloging history of the papers. Devoto also worked hard at publishing a selection from them: mark twain in eruption 1940 , mark twain at work 1952 , and the portable mark twain 1946. But clara prevented publication of letters from the earth until 1962, almost twenty five years after devoto had prepared it in 1939.

dixon wecter editor, 1947 150 50 was already a distinguished historian when devoto stepped down in his favor. He was then professor of history at ucla and chairman of the research group at the huntington library in san marino, california. In january 1947 the papers arrived in california on a ten year loan to the huntington. By 1949 wecter had published two collections of letters that were not part of the mark twain papers. But his major project was a definitive biography based largely on these documents, to which he had exclusive access. Partly because of that project, he was disinclined to grant others much access to the papers, and he was opposed to one of devoto x0027 s projects, a complete collection of mark twain x0027 s letters, at least until his biography had been published.

1947 150 50 in 1949, however, wecter took a job several hundred miles north of san marino in the history department of the university of california at berkeley. Persuasive and courtly texan that he was, wecter easily convinced clara to allow him to take the papers with him to berkeley. And before the papers even arrived in their new home, wecter persuaded clara to bequeath them to uc berkeley rather than to yale.

On 20 june 1949 she signed a codicil giving ownership of the papers but not their copyright, which the trustees of clemens x0027 s estate retained to the university of california. Almost exactly one year later, on 24 june 1950, wecter died unexpectedly at age forty four, having completed only the early years of his projected biography, later published by his widow as sam clemens of hannibal 1952. The papers remained in the berkeley library, without an editor in charge, until 1953, when henry nash smith was persuaded to join the berkeley english department, and to accept a half time appointment as mark twain x0027 s fourth literary editor. henry nash smith editor, 1953 150 64 and frederick anderson 1964 150 79 each played decisive roles in opening the papers for use by scholars, and in setting on foot the scholarly editions that became known as the mark twain project. Smith persuaded clara to allow devoto x0027 s letters from the earth to be published in 1962.

And in that same year he helped negotiate a contract between the trustees of clemens x0027 s estate and the uc regents, enabling for the first time regular publication of mark twain manuscripts contained in the papers. That contract and its renewal in 1982 formed the necessary basis for the scholarly edition, published exclusively by the university of california press. 1953 150 64 eleven months after the contract was signed, on 19 november 1962, clara clemens samossoud died at the age of 88. After twenty five years of wandering from institution to institution they had at last settled down. The death of clara x0027 s daughter, nina, in 1966 was followed almost immediately by the death of jacques samossoud, clara x0027 s second husband. All these events made public access to the papers significantly easier than it had ever been before. Anderson took control of the papers in 1964, just three years before federal grant funds from the national endowment for the humanities neh became available for large editorial projects devoted to major nineteenth century american authors.