Stored under lock and key since his death 100 years ago, the first volume of Mark Twain's autobiography will be published later this year by the University of California Press. The author had specified a century's wait, so that he might be properly "dead, and unaware, and indifferent". In the meantime, the summer issue of Granta magazine (out next week) will be running an exclusive extract, in which Twain recalls childhood summers on his uncle's farm.
The highlight for literary buffs will be the revelation that a middle-aged slave, "Uncle Dan'l", was the inspiration for Jim in Huckleberry Finn. For others, it is likely to be his discourse on the joys of tobacco for seven-year-old boys. "A strapping girl of 15, in the customary sunbonnet and calico dress, asked me if I 'used tobacco' – meaning did I chew it. I said, no. It roused her scorn. She reported me to all the crowd and said, 'Here is a boy seven years old who can't chew tobacco.' By the looks and comments which this produced, I realised I was a degraded object; I was cruelly ashamed of myself. I determined to reform. But I only made myself sick; I was not able to learn to chew tobacco. I learned to smoke fairly well, but that did not conciliate anybody, and I remained a poor thing, and characterless." Twain carried on smoking for 67 years, until his death in 1910.
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