After keeping us waiting for a century, Mark Twain will finally reveal all.
The great American writer left instructions not to publish his autobiography until 100 years after his death, which is now

By Guy Adams in Los Angeles
The Independent, Sunday, 23 May 2010

Mark Twain, pictured around the turn of the 20th century, created such loved characters as Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer
Getty Images

Exactly a century after rumours of his death turned out to be entirely accurate, one of Mark Twain's dying wishes is at last coming true: an extensive, outspoken and revelatory autobiography which he devoted the last decade of his life to writing is finally going to be published.

The creator of Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and some of the most frequently misquoted catchphrases in the English language left behind 5,000 unedited pages of memoirs when he died in 1910, together with handwritten notes saying that he did not want them to hit bookshops for at least a century.

That milestone has now been reached, and in November the University of California, Berkeley, where the manuscript is in a vault, will release the first volume of Mark Twain's autobiography. The eventual trilogy will run to half a million words, and shed new light on the quintessentially American novelist.
The full piece at The Independent.