Every effort has been made to preserve Mark Twain's words—his “substantives”—and his “accidentals”—his spelling, punctuation, word-division, and capitalization—in the ten works reproduced in this volume. Spelling has not been corrected except where, as with his habitual misspelling “sieze,” no nineteenth-century authority for a Clemens spelling can be found. Mark Twain was meticulous about his punctuation; it has been left as written except where it is obviously inadequate or in error. For instance, where he interlined a number of song titles in “Villagers” with periods or with no punctuation at all, necessary semicolons have been added.
Similarly, no attempt has been made to impose consistency upon Mark Twain's accidentals unless he showed a demonstrable preference for one form. Thus “dog fight” in “Tupperville-Dobbsville” has been emended to conform to the more usual “dog-fight” used one sentence later because it appears that the unhyphenated form was a lapse rather than a conscious selection on the author's part. But inconsistent references to the “bad god” or “Bad God” in “Huck and Tom among the Indians” have been allowed to stand because it is clear that Mark Twain had not made up his mind about the status of the god. To alter his usage would be to obscure his indecision. When Mark Twain appeared to be indifferent about equally acceptable usages, as in the alternative spellings “recognize” and “recognise,” these forms have been allowed to stand unchanged.
[begin page 406]Silent revisions have been kept to a minimum. However, manuscript forms peculiar to the written page have not been transferred to the printed page. Ampersands have been expanded to “and,” “&c.” to “etc.” Parentheses and square brackets have both been rendered as parentheses, and superscript letters and figures have been lowered to the line. Eccentricities of Mark Twain's handwriting have not been noted. The lines of various length and number with which he divided his manuscripts into sections have been dropped, as have instructions such as “over.” Chapter headings have been silently standardized: periods following chapter numbers have been dropped; chapter numbers have been supplied where the author left a blank; and “Chapter” has replaced Mark Twain's “Chap.,” “CHAP” or “CHAPTER.” Except for these silent changes, all departures from the copy-text have been listed in a table of emendations.
The textual apparatus consists of the following:
Textual Commentary: Whenever a text presents unusual features which require some modification of the general editorial principles set forth above, its features are described in the textual commentary, and the editorial principles followed are noted.
Emendations of the Copy-Texts: The emended reading as it appears in the text is given first, followed by a square bracket and the rejected copy-text reading. The emendations for the first nine works all originate with the editor. The list for “Tom Sawyer: A Play” includes editorial corrections of the typescript plus revisions and corrections drawn from the manuscript. When the manuscript is the source for the emendation, the bracket is followed by the notation “MS” and a semicolon. Asterisked readings are discussed in the textual notes.
Textual Notes: The textual notes comment on vexed readings, emendations or refusals to emend which require explanations, and special characteristics of the text such as repagination.
Alterations in the Copy-Texts: The variety of works included in this volume makes it impossible to treat Mark Twain's alterations in the copy-texts in a uniform fashion. In some cases his revisions are so trivial or the works themselves so fragmentary that a full listing is superfluous. To tabulate every revision in the Tom Sawyer play manuscript and typescript would require as much space as the text itself. In three instances, the revisions have been described and only cancellations of [begin page 407] major importance have been printed in full. The works treated in this fashion are “Clairvoyant,” “Tom Sawyer's Gang Plans a Naval Battle,” and “Tom Sawyer: A Play.”
All alterations in the manuscripts of the other works are included in full. The only exceptions are unrecoverable cancellations and essential corrections which Mark Twain made as he wrote or reread his work. These latter fall into six categories: (1) letters or words which have been mended, traced over, or canceled and rewritten for clarity; (2) false starts and slips of the pen; (3) corrected eye skips; (4) mended or corrected misspellings; (5) words or phrases which have been inadvertently repeated, then canceled; and (6) inadvertent additions of letters or punctuation which have been subsequently canceled, for instance, an incorrect “they” or “then” altered to “the” or superfluous quotation marks canceled at the end of a narrative passage.
“Above” in the description means “interlined” and “over” means “in the same space.” The presence of a caret is always noted. Square brackets signify one or more illegible letters; letters within square brackets are conjectural.
Word-Division: When a possible compound is hyphenated at the end of a line in the copy-text, it is reproduced in this volume according to the author's usual practice. His practice is determined by other examples or by parallels within the manuscript when possible, or by the practice of other works of the period when it is not. The word-division tables list the words as they appear in this text.