Roughing it

This comic narrative is based on Mark Twain's six years of "variegated vagabondising" in the American West at the height of silver-mining fever. The text reprinted here is identical with that first published in 1993 in the California Press "Works of Mark Twain", approved by the Centre for Scholarly Editions and awarded the 1993-94 Modern Language Association Prize for a Distinguished Scholarly Edition. It includes all of the original illustrations. Mark Twain's narrative has been expertly annotated to supply the essential historical context (technical apparatus and the introduction are available only in the "Works" volume). This is certain to be the standard edition of "Roughing It" for scholars, students, and general readers.

This work includes all 304 first-edition illustrations by True Williams, Edward F. Mullen, and others. It provides the first and only text that adheres to the author's wishes in details of wording, spelling, and punctuation, restored from original sources. It features expert annotation, specially prepared maps, facsimile manuscript pages, and other supplementary documents. This work reproduces the text and notes of the Mark Twain Project's 1993 edition, winner of the Modern Language Association Prize for a 'Distinguished Scholarly Edition'. Mark Twain's humorous account of his six years in Nevada, San Francisco, and the Sandwich Islands is a patchwork of personal anecdotes and tall tales, many of them told in the 'vigorous new vernacular' of the West. Selling seventy five thousand copies within a year of its publication in 1872, "Roughing It" was greeted as a work of 'wild, preposterous invention and sublime exaggeration' whose satiric humor made 'pretension and false dignity ridiculous'. Meticulously restored from a variety of original sources, the text is the first to adhere to the author's wishes in thousands of details of wording, spelling, and punctuation, and includes all of the 304 first-edition illustrations. With its comprehensive and illuminating notes and supplementary materials, which include detailed maps tracing Mark Twain's western travels, this "Mark Twain Library: Roughing It" must be considered the standard edition for readers and students of Mark Twain.