The Letters of Mark Twain, Complete: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

The Letters of Mark Twain, Complete, credited to Mark Twain, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of The Letters of Mark Twain, Complete, by Mark Twain. Read by James K. White. These letters were arranged in two volumes by Albert Bigelow Paine, Samuel L. Clemens's literary executor, as a supplement to Mark Twain, A Biography, which Paine wrote. They are, for the most part, every letter written by Clemens known to exist at the time of their publication in 1917. They begin with a fragment of a letter from teenaged Sam Clemens to his sister, Pamela, and conclude with a letter to his attorney two weeks before his death. These letters give us some degree of insight into the evolution of Twain's style of speech and prose over his lifetime. We see in them the development of his trademark "grotesque exaggeration"--his "gentle resignation to disappointment." They are a small window into the psyche that created the various characters of his stories. But The Letters of Mark Twain also reveal the tragedies of his life: the lack of success in his business ventures, the passing of family and friends. And as I read each one in this collection, I can almost detect the faint odor of one of his “devilish” cigars wafting across the room. (Introduction by James K. White)

Recording facts

• Recording title: The Letters of Mark Twain, Complete
• Author credits: Mark Twain
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 51
• Listed recording duration: 32:45:20

Catalogue topics

• Mark Twain, biography, memoirs, epistles

Opening tracks: first 24 of 51

1. 00 - Forward; Mark Twain--A Biographical Summary — 43:07
2. 01 - Volume I, Chapter I — 28:42
3. 02 - Volume I, Chapter II — 51:20
4. 03 - Volume I, Chapter III (part 1) — 48:40
5. 04 - Volume I, Chapter III (part 2) — 34:57
6. 05 - Volume I, Chapter IV — 24:12
7. 06 - Volume I, Chapter V — 56:37
8. 07 - Volume I, Chapter VI — 21:46
9. 08 - Volume II, Chapter VII — 20:27
10. 09 - Volume II, Chapter VIII — 34:05
11. 10 - Volume II, Chapter IX — 43:39
12. 11 - Volume II, Chapter X — 45:07
13. 12 - Volume II, Chapter XI — 12:48
14. 13 - Volume II, Chapter XII — 31:50
15. 14 - Volume II, Chapter XIII — 32:02
16. 15 - Volume II, Chapter XIV — 30:17
17. 16 - Volume II, Chapter XV — 58:20
18. 17 - Volume III, Chapter XVI — 48:56
19. 18 - Volume III, Chapter XVII — 1:02:56
20. 19 - Volume III, Chapter XVIII — 58:24
21. 20 - Volume III, Chapter XIX (part 1) — 33:52
22. 21 - Volume III, Chapter 19 (part 2) — 38:06
23. 22 - Volume III, Chapter XX — 39:31
24. 23 - Volume III, Chapter XXI — 41:54

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Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.