After a century of anticipation from fans around the world, Mark Twain's autobiography hits stores this month.
The first volume of the three-volume edition comes out Nov. 15.
The famed author of American classics "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" and "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" began drafting his autobiography in 1870.
It remained a work in progress until shortly before his death in 1910.
As one of his dying wishes, Twain asked for the publication of his autobiography to be delayed for 100 years.
"The fact that now you can go into the bookstore, hopefully, and pick up the autobiography and read it should make it a lot easier to incorporate this kind of material into our thinking and our scholarship," said Erich Nunn, assistant professor of English.
The delayed release of the autobiography should increase the excitement among fans, said Katy Goodman, junior in English.
"I also think it will drastically change the way we analyze his texts because we will know more about where he is writing from and will also impact many of his fans," Goodman said.
Nunn said he anticipates this text will be valuable to the study of Twain's works.
"It helps us to gain a much broader, but also deeper understanding of Twain's political investment," Nunn said. "I think that the standard line on this is that Twain in this autobiography was far more politically outspoken than he had been in his fiction, which tended to be satirical."
Nunn, who regularly teaches Twain's works in his American Literature classes, said students often come to class having read "Huckleberry Finn" in high school, and the challenge is to teach them a new, deeper understanding of the novel.
Although the information found in the autobiography has been available to scholars in archival form for quite some time, this new edition is the first time Twain's autobiography will be available to the public.
"This is far and away the most complete version of the autobiography, and this should end up being the definitive edition of this important text," Nunn said. "What this publication represents is the opportunity for nonspecialist people who aren't scholars of Twain to have greater access to that material."
Nunn described the intense editorial process that the new, publicly accessible form of the autobiography went through.
"Versions of the autobiography had been published before, but they'd always been highly edited," Nunn said. "The editions of the autobiography that had been out often reflected the political or aesthetic concerns of their editors."
Adam White, senior in English, has several ideas as to why Twain wanted to wait 100 years to publish his autobiography.
"I think he decided to hold its release for 100 years either because he wanted to talk to the future, which is pretty cool, or he wanted to let us overanalyze his work for 100 years before he slapped us with the truth," White said.
The autobiography will impact classes as well.
"I think that this material may certainly show up in future classes that I teach and would imagine the same is true for other people as well," Nunn said.
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