Among other things, our Book Division currently houses two variant issues of the first edition of Twain’s 1883 memoir Life on the Mississippi. Clements’ that brings people to our collections looking for Mark Twain, they won’t be disappointed. And while I can’t say I loved it, or that I’ll ever really re-visit it, except for perhaps to randomly dip in and out, I can say that I feel I got something out of it, if only a better respect for the mighty Mississippi as it once was, wild and independent.Though it may occasionally be a confusion between ‘Samuel L. Twain gets full marks for making the life of a steamboat man sound romantic it’s a testament to his talent that he even makes it interesting to read. Definitely not riveting, but it draws a picture of life in the late 1800’s that is vivid and brings both a pang of nostalgia for those easier days and a relief not to have been born in that age. What I found was a very time-consuming, but absorbing read, made enjoyable by Twain’s voice and trademark humour. So with this introduction read, I resigned myself and started. Which he does, but what they don’t tell you is that he folds it all into a cohesive narrative that works fairly well, if a little chaotically. The author of the introduction made it sound like Twain just filled out the second half of the book with a hodgepodge collection of other peoples’ articles and anecdotes. The story of Life on the Mississippi‘s creation is interesting, but finding out that fully half the book was considered ‘filler’ is not an auspicious start. The Introduction to my Folio edition doesn’t fill the reader with optimism.

I grabbed it earlier this month, figuring that I could fulfil my yen for non-fiction and mark off a classic author at the same time.

This it is why Life on the Mississippi has been sitting on my TBR shelf that, and the fact that I found a Folio Society copy for a bargain. Occasionally, the grown-up in me will rear her annoying head and insist that I at least try a classic or two – who knows? I might like it, and I don’t have to finish it if I don’t. I know it’s contrary and based on no rational I just don’t like being told what to do and what to like. The bias is this: It is my perverse nature to avoid books and authors considered to be classics. It’s a bias that I have fought against a spare few times in my life, but by and large, it has ruled my reading life. I have to admit, here, to a bias a prejudice.

Life on the mississippi 1883