The basic goal of this volume has been to collect the best of what Mark Twain wrote—but did not publish—about the Matter of Hannibal. That goal has occasioned some departure from the usual pattern of the Mark Twain Library. For the first time, texts have been reprinted from four separate volumes in the scholarly edition (The Mark Twain Papers and Works of Mark Twain), each prepared by a different editor, at various intervals between 1967 and 1980. It was therefore all but inevitable that these texts would require a relatively large number of corrections and adjustments. And, since much of the interest in these selections lay in their relation to the historical and biographical facts, a “sparingly annotated” reprint could scarcely justify itself, let alone satisfy the universal curiosity about that relation. Too much has been learned even in the last five years about the factual basis of Mark Twain’s fiction to warrant a simple sifting of the original annotation. The editors have therefore corrected the texts wherever possible, and have included an extensive correction and enrichment of the editorial commentary first published with these several selections in The Mark Twain Papers and Works of Mark Twain.
Except for the first two selections, “Boy’s Manuscript” and “Letter to William Bowen,” all have been reprinted here from their typesetting in the scholarly edition—not necessarily page for page, but virtually without resetting. Where piecemeal resetting has nevertheless been required, and where typesetting was necessarily de novo (as it was for the first two selections, and of course for all editorial commentary), the type has been proofread in accord with the standards of the Modern Language Association’s Committee on Scholarly Editions (CSE). Whether or not any part of a selection was reset, it was carefully re-compared with the manuscript or documents on which it is based. Changes in the original typesetting have been made in order to accommodate new historical or manuscript evidence, correct errors of transcription, apply the original editorial policy more consistently, or simply to eliminate needless intrusions, such as editorial footnotes on the text page. All changes to the texts, however slight, are listed here: the reading now adopted appears to the left of the bullet • the reading being changed appears to the right of it.
Boy’s Manuscript (1–19). Reprinted and emended here is the “Reading Text” published in Supplement A of TS, 420–35, edited by John C. Gerber and Paul Baender. MS in CU-MARK. That printing has been reset throughout, partly to make a few corrections, but chiefly to conform with the typeface used for all the other selections.
Letter to William Bowen (20–23). This letter now appears in the Mark Twain Papers series in Mark Twain’s Letters, Volume 4, 1870–1871, accompanied by a complete textual commentary. The text has been established from photographs and direct inspection of pages 1–8 and 13–14 of the original manuscript at the University of Texas (TxU). For manuscript pages 9–12 (“unto . . . father-in-law,” 22.2–32), which are lost, the source of the text is necessarily SLC 1938, 8–10, and a TS at the Mark Twain Memorial (CtHMTH), each of which derives independently from a (now lost) transcript of the complete MS prepared in 1887 by William Bowen. In addition, because the manuscript was written in a violet ink, now faded, we have drawn on SLC 1938 and the TS, as well as a third transcript (prepared from the MS, minus pages 9–12), all of which were made when the MS was somewhat more legible than it is now. Authorial deletions are represented with a slash or a horizontal rule through the type; insertions are enclosed by carets. Authorial errors are not corrected, so long as they can be intelligibly transcribed. A complete record of all emendation is on deposit with, and available upon request from, the Mark Twain Project, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 94720-6000.
Tupperville-Dobbsville (24–26). Reprinted and emended here is the text published in HH&T, 55–57, edited by Walter Blair. MS in CU-MARK.
Clairvoyant (27–32). Reprinted but not emended here is the text published in HH&T, 61–66, edited by Walter Blair. MS in CU-MARK.
Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer among the Indians (33–81). Reprinted and emended here is the text published in HH&T, 92–140, edited by Walter Blair. It has been re-compared with photocopy of the manuscript, which is housed chiefly at the Detroit Public Library (MiD), although random pages are also owned by CtHMTH, KyLoU, CLjC, NNU-F, and NBolS. Where pages are missing from the manuscript, the omissions are necessarily supplied from galley proof of type which the author had set on the Paige typesetter directly from his manuscript when it was still intact (CU-MARK). Seven additional pages of the manuscript have been found since HH&T [begin page 373] appeared in 1969, and they provide a handful of corrections to a portion of the text previously based on galley proof.
Jane Lampton Clemens (82–92). Reprinted but not emended here is the text published in HH&T, 43–53, edited by Walter Blair. MS in CU-MARK.
Villagers of 1840–3 (93–108). Reprinted and emended here are the text published in HH&T, 28–40, edited by Walter Blair, and (as part of “The Hellfire Hotchkiss Sequence”) the text published in S&B, 200–203, edited by Franklin R. Rogers. MSS in CU-MARK. Separately published in HH&T and S&B, they are here published together for the first time as Mark Twain wrote them (the pieces join at 105.21). For further explanation of the original confusion, see pages 279–80.
Hellfire Hotchkiss (109–33). Reprinted and emended here is the text published in S&B, 175–203, edited by Franklin R. Rogers. MS in CU-MARK. The alternate passage originally following “you.’ ” (118.25) has been omitted, and the portion mistakenly included from “Villagers of 1840–3” has been moved to its proper place at the end of that selection (105.21–108.12). The editorial footnotes and the footnote superscript numbers interpolated in the S&B text have been silently omitted. Since S&B was not approved by the Center for Editions of American Authors (CEAA), predecessor to the CSE, the text of this selection has been re-edited, complete textual records prepared for it, and inspected by the CSE. The record of Mark Twain’s alterations in his MS is too long to publish here, but it is available upon request from the [begin page 374] Mark Twain Project. Except that ampersands (&) have been silently amended to “and,” the following list records all editorial emendations of the MS, the unaltered reading of which appears to the right of the bullet.
Tom Sawyer’s Conspiracy (134–213). Reprinted and emended here is the text published in HH&T, 163–242, edited by Walter Blair. MS in CU-MARK.
Schoolhouse Hill (214–59). Reprinted and emended here is the text published in MSM, 175–220, edited by William M. Gibson. MS in CU-MARK.
Huck Finn (260–61). Reprinted and emended here is the text published in HH&T, 143–44, edited by Walter Blair. MS in CU-MARK.