The first volume of Mark Twain’s Autobiography is due out on November 15, 2010.  He dictated the autobiography and ordered that it not be published until 100 years after his death when he would be “dead, and unaware, and indifferent.”  Twain died in 1910 and here we are 100 years later when Americans and the world are still joyfully reading, debating, and censoring his writing.

I realize November is a long way off, but today The Huffington Post has an interesting and informative video about this publishing milestone and Twain, which you can click here to watch. The project editors read a few quotes from the autobiography and you can see the “vault” where Twain’s papers are kept.

If you’re interested, you can further explore The Mark Twain Papers and Project at UC Berkeley here.

I’m excited–this makes me want to read more Twain.  I vaguely remember reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer when I was younger, but Twain is one of those writers that I’ve read more about than I’ve actually read his writing.

I’m particularly looking forward to reading his travel writing for which my appetite was wetted by a recent podcast from PRI’s The World — The World’s Books Podcast with Bill Marx (episode #35) about Twain’s travel writing, his impact, and reputation.  You can find the episode here.

And the next time I’m in Connecticut, I hope to be in Hartford when his home/museum is actually open instead of peeping through the windows like some hungry street urchin watching diners in a swank restaurant.