Explanatory Notes
Headnote
Apparatus Notes
Guide
MTPDocEd
An Early Attempt ❉ Textual Commentary

Source documents.

MS      Manuscript of 3 leaves, written in 1906: ‘AUTOBIOGRAPHY . . . Attempt’ (201 title–203 title). (The MS pages are reproduced in facsimile in the Introduction, figures 2–4, pp. 34–36.)
TS Hobby      Typescript of 1 unnumbered leaf, made by Hobby from the MS: ‘AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARK TWAIN’ (201 title).

The third leaf of the MS contains only Clemens’s instruction, ‘Here insert the 44 old type-written pages.’ He wrote the MS in June 1906 when he decided on a plan for his autobiography, It was written in black ink on cream wove stationery measuring 5 11/16 by 8⅞ inches. Clemens used the top margin of TS Hobby to write a rough draft of “Preface. As from the Grave” (see the Textual Commentary for that preface).

[begin page 203]
An Early Attemptapparatus note

The chapters which immediately follow constitute a fragment ofapparatus note one of my many attempts (after I was in my forties)apparatus note to put my life on paperexplanatory note.apparatus note

It starts out with good confidence, but suffers the fate of its brethren—isapparatus note presently abandoned for some other and newer interest. This is not to be wondered at, for its plan is the old, old, old unflexible and difficult one—the plan that starts you at the cradle andapparatus note drives you straight for the grave, with no side-excursions permitted on the way. Whereas the side-excursions are the life of ourapparatus note life-voyage, and should be, also, of its history.

Revisions, Variants Adopted or Rejected, and Textual Notes An Early Attempt
  Attempt ●  Attempt. | triple rule (MS) 
  a fragment of ●  a fragment of  (MS) 
  (after I was in my forties) ●  (after I was in my forties)  (MS) 
  paper. ●  paper. The first part of it is lost.  (MS) 
  brethren—is ●  brethren. is is ‘is’ rewritten for clarity  (MS) 
  cradle and ●  cradle, and  (MS) 
  our ●  the our  (MS) 
Explanatory Notes An Early Attempt
 

The chapters which immediately follow . . . to put my life on paper] Clemens wrote the title page and “Early Attempt” preface for Autobiography of Mark Twain in June 1906, when he conceived his final plan for the work; his manuscript survives in the Mark Twain Papers. See the Introduction for a discussion of this plan and a facsimile of the manuscript (figures 2–3).