Newly discovered newspaper articles by Mark Twain reveal 'identity crisis'
A team of University of California, Berkeley scholars working on the have from his early days as a newspaper man in San Francisco. Many of these stories and letters, which are 150 years old, reveal a darker side of the author who eventually came to be known as America鈥檚 first modern celebrity.
When Twain was 29 years old, he worked in San Francisco as a correspondent for the Territorial Enterprise in Virginia City, Nev., filing 2,000-word columns six days a week, for听.
These early works contain the signature wit and stinging criticism that would later define Twain's writing. He frequently used his columns to mock the corrupt San Francisco police department, which tried to sue him once for comparing the chief to a dog chasing its tail to impress its mistress.
鈥淏lackmail, corruption and bribery is the rule, and not the exception, among the municipal body, all of whom are 鈥� like so many shoplifters or highwaymen,鈥� . 鈥淭he correspondent suggests the necessity of hanging half the policemen.鈥�
While the confident and controversial Twain would go on to write the American classics 鈥淭he Adventures of Tom Sawyer鈥� and 鈥淭he Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,鈥� the letters and columns uncovered by the Berkeley scholars show a very different side of him.
鈥淗e was in the middle of an identity crisis,鈥� Bob Hirst, editor of the Mark Twain Project at Berkeley, . 鈥淗e was facing debt and had not embraced his talent. He was tormented by it. He was drinking too much and didn鈥檛 know what to do with himself. He thought humor was literature of a low order.鈥�
Among in 1865 听that read: 鈥淚f I do not get out of debt in three months 鈥� pistols or poison for one 鈥� exit me.鈥�听
Twain eventually听,听and journalism for fiction. By all accounts, he听was much happier for it.
The Territorial Enterprise ceased publishing in the 19th century and all its files have since been destroyed, so scholars have had to find reprints of his work in other sources. The , allowing the team to work much more quickly than they ever could when historical documents were primarily on microfilm.
So far, the Mark Twain Project scholars have uncovered 110 documents. All have been , either by his byline or his signature writing style.
鈥淲e鈥檝e reached the point where we鈥檙e willing to say, 鈥榃e鈥檝e done our homework, we鈥檙e ready to put this into a book,'鈥� Hirst , estimating that a volume would appear in about a year and a half.
