Mark Twain’s Notebook: Prepared For Publication With Comments by Albert Bigleow Paine.

TWAIN, Mark. [Samuel L. Clemens].

Item Number: 128025

New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1935.

First edition of Paine’s insightful and masterfully curated compilation of Twain’s journal entries. Octavo, original cloth, frontispiece portrait of Twain dictating, illustrated. From the library of William Safire, although not marked. William Safire was an important American author, columnist, journalist, and presidential speechwriter. He joined Nixon’s campaign for the 1960 Presidential race, and supported him again in 1968. After Nixon’s 1968 victory, Safire served as a speechwriter for him and Spiro Agnew. He authored several political columns in addition to his weekly column “On Language” in The New York Times Magazine from 1979 until the month of his death and authored two books on grammar and linguistics: The New Language of Politics (1968) and what Zimmer called Safire’s “magnum opus,” Safire’s Political Dictionary. Safire later served as a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board from 1995 to 2004 and in 2006 was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush. In near fine condition.

"In his journal, Mark Twain recorded in random phrase and fashion whatever seemed to him worth noting. Those expecting the salacious are likely to be disappointed. Those hoping for furtive indecencies are certain to be... Twain was nothing if not frank, and he was a master of Anglo-Saxon word and phrase. He had little taste for refinements and suggestion. In the pages that follow he pauses here and there to free his mind: politics, religion, the divine right of kings, personalities, he has something to say of these... The entries, whatever their interest, or lack of it - are as he left them, and they bring us about as near as we shall ever get to this remarkable man, easily the most remarkable of his time"( Albert Bigelow Paine, Preface).