(Twain's alter ego even shared the author's same initials - S. Read more about Mark Twain's favorite novel, Joan of Arc, by clicking here.Regarded by many as the most luminous example of Mark Twain's work, this fictional biography of Joan of Arc was purportedly written by Joan's page and secretary - Sieur Louis de Conté. Robert Wiggins, Mark Twain: Jackleg Novelist Twain had to tell her story because she is the sole concrete argument against the pessimistic doctrines of his deterministic philosophy.' 'Joan of Arc is the lone example that history affords of an actual, real embodiment of all the virtues demonstrated by Huck and Jim and of all that Twain felt to be noble in man, Joan is the ideal toward which mankind strives. Edward Wagenknecht, The Man and His Work 'Twain's understanding of history and Joan's place in it accounts for his regarding his book Joan of Arc as worth all of his other books together.' George Rutler, Author, The Cure d’Ars Today

It is as though the man in a white suit and a cloud of cigar smoke thought there just might be a place where people in white robes stand in clouds of incense.” In doing so he tells a secret about himself. “Mark Twain comes furtively like Nicodemus at night with this tribute to one of God’s saints. The others needed no preparation and got none.”

And besides, it furnished me seven times the pleasure afforded me by any of the others twelve years of preparation, and two years of writing. “ I like Joan of Arc best of all my books and it is the best I know it perfectly well. This is a book that really will inform and inspire. The very fact that Mark Twain wrote this book and wrote it the way he did is a powerful testimony to the attractive power of the Catholic Church's saints. Instead one finds a remarkably accurate biography of the life and mission of Joan of Arc told by one of this country's greatest storytellers. He reached his conclusion about Joan's unique place in history only after studying in detail accounts written by both sides, the French and the English.īecause of Mark Twain's antipathy to institutional religion, one might expect an anti-Catholic bias toward Joan or at least toward the bishops and theologians who condemned her. He spent twelve years in research and many months in France doing archival work and then made several attempts until he felt he finally had the story he wanted to tell. Still fewer know that he considered it not only his most important but also his best work. See more great novels at Very few people know that Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) wrote a major work on Joan of Arc.

Recollections of joan of arc