The Twain Shall Meet
To call Gary Scharnhorst’s three-volume biography of Mark Twain monumental is an understatement. With the publication of the third volume, The Life of Mark Twain: The Final Years, 1891-1910, Scharnhorst, distinguished professor emeritus of English at the University of New Mexico, has completed the most comprehensive biography of the American author ever written. Twain has been the subject of nearly 100 biographies, but not since his official biographer, Albert Bigelow Paine, published his three-volume biography in 1912 has the author been treated at such length. Paine’s massive biography i...