In Anticipation of Mark Twain’s Autobiography

Letters from HawaiiNext month (November 15, to be exact), the much-anticipated first volume of The Autobiography of Mark Twain will be available from University of California Press.

What should you do in the meantime?

Read Mark Twain’s Letters from Hawaii! The 30-year-old Twain, who had not yet been outside the U.S., composed twenty-five travel letters for the Sacramento Union during his 4-month stay in the Sandwich Islands. A tireless sightseer, Twain went everywhere and wrote on whatever interested him: scenery and climate, politics, social conditions, Polynesian legends and lore, the monarcy, missionaries, business, and history. Letters and Twain’s Hawai‘i experiences opened the door to a new and lucrative profession for the writer—that of lecturer—and gave him material for a series of popular travel accounts that would culminate in his first important book, The Innocents Abroad.

Mark Twain’s Letters from Hawaii
Edited by A. Grove Day
ISBN 978-0-8248-0288-2 / $17.99 (PAPER)