Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc

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Mark Twain's work on Joan of Arc is titled in full Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, by the Sieur Louis de Conte who is identified further as Joan's page and secretary. The work is fictionally presented as a translation from the manuscript by Jean Francois Alden, or, in the words of the published book, "Freely Translated out of the Ancient French into Modern English from the Original Unpublished Manuscript in the National Archives of France".

The work was originally published as a serialization in Harper's Magazine beginning in 1895 and later published in book form in 1896. The current edition is from Ignatius Press, San Francisco, and was first published by them in 1989 (ISBN 0-89870-268-2). This edition also contains, in an Appendix, Mark Twain's essay entitled "Saint Joan of Arc".

De Conte is a fictional character who provides narrative unity to the story. He is presented as an individual who was with Joan during the three major phases of her life - as a youth in Domremy, as the commander of Charles' army on military campaign, and as a defendant at the trial in Rouen. The fictional character de Conte is further presented as having written his memoirs, in his later years, for the benefit of his descendants and it is these memoirs that the reader is told constitute the "Original Unpublished Manuscript" translated by Alden.

[edit] The Book's Reception

I like Joan of Arc best of all my books; and it is the best; I know it perfectly well. And besides, it furnished me seven times the pleasure afforded me by any of the others; twelve years of preparation, and two years of writing. The others need no preparation and got none.

—Mark Twain

Twain had a personal fascination with Joan, and initially penned this novel under a pseudonym. It has a very different feel and flow than Twain's other works. There is a distinct lack of humor so prevalent in his other works. This is a mature Twain writing something of personal interest.

The real author, Mark Twain, considered this, his last finished novel, to be his best and most important work, a view not shared by critics then or since. Iconoclastic author George Bernard Shaw, in his preface to his own play Saint Joan, accuses Twain of being "infatuated" with Joan of Arc, so much so that he "romanticizes" the story of Joan into the so-called "legend" that has been handed down to generations, in which the English conducted a trial which was deliberately rigged to find Joan guilty of witchcraft and heresy. (Twain was not the only one who accepted the "legend", however. A similar outlook on the trial was found in Joan of Arc, which was written by Maxwell Anderson and Andrew Solt. In recent years, with the trial transcripts readily available, it has been strongly suggested that Twain's belief may, indeed, have been closer to the truth than Shaw was willing to accept.) Perhaps Mr. Samuel Clemens learned what many before and since have always known; namely, that an author, no matter how well known and regarded, who attempts to step out of his established genre, may have a difficult time in being accepted in the new genre.

[edit] External links

• Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc by Mark Twain - an online version from the Internet History Sourcebooks Project

Works of Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

Fiction: Advice for Little Girls • The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County • General Washington's Negro Body-Servant • My Late Senatorial Secretaryship • Mark Twain's (Burlesque) Autobiography and First Romance • The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today • The Adventures of Tom Sawyer • 1601: Conversation, as it was by the Social Fireside, in the Time of the Tudors • The Prince and the Pauper • Adventures of Huckleberry Finn • A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court • The American Claimant • Tom Sawyer Abroad • Pudd'nhead Wilson • Tom Sawyer, Detective • Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc • The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg • A Double Barrelled Detective Story • Edmund Burke on Croker and Tammany • A Dog's Tale • King Leopold's Soliloquy • The War Prayer • The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • A Horse's Tale • Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven • Letters from the Earth • The Mysterious Stranger • No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger Non Fiction: The Innocents Abroad • Memoranda (monthly column) • Roughing It • Old Times on the Mississippi • A Tramp Abroad • Life on the Mississippi • How to Tell a Story and other Essays • Following the Equator • What Is Man? • Christian Science • Is Shakespeare Dead? • Queen Victoria's Jubilee • Mark Twain's Autobiography • Mark Twain's Notebook • Mark Twain's Weapons of Satire: Anti-Imperialist Writings on the Philippine-American War • The Bible According to Mark Twain: Writings on Heaven, Eden, and the Flood Short Story Books: Sketches New and Old • A True Story and the Recent Carnival of Crime • Punch, Brothers, Punch! and other Sketches • Merry Tales • The £1,000,000 Bank Note and Other New Stories