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MARK TWAIN - Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc

© Barbara Ann Lyons

Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc is an historical novel. Mark Twain turned to this writing form later in his writing career as a passion and consuming obsession. It took all of 12 years to produce what he considered his masterpiece. He creates the events of her life through the voice of Sieur Louis de Conte, her lifelong friend and companion.

Historical novel, as the name implies, is history told in story form. Sir Walter Scott premiered this genre, a romantic retelling of past events. Had it not been for this story method, we may never have evolved into the fine fiction of a Jane Austen. The public loved the historical novel. They were portraits of reality and deemed worthy of the time it took to read them because it gave them the feeling that to read about people who once lived and figured in human events was not such a waste of time as to read about people who never lived at all.

Twain was more than a beloved writer. He lectured extensively, mesmerizing his audiences with his comic satire, cadences, and imaginative exaggerations. He wrote for young and old alike. Threaded through much of Twain's material is his dissatisfaction with human nature. Man's ability to strike without conscience. "Evolution failed when man appeared for his was the only evil heart in the entire animal kingdom", stated Twain. Yet Mark Twain was speaking of Mark Twain: "What any man sees in the human race, he admitted, is merely himself in the deep and private honesty of his own heart." At his best and at his worst, Twain seemed to be a mirror of all men.

Have I interested you in this humble writer? You can read more about him in the authorized biography by Albert B. Paine - Mark Twain, a Biography: The Personal and Literary Life of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 3 vol. (1912).

In "Personal Recollections", Joan's plight begins in 1429. She was a 17 year old indigent who freed France from the clutches of England. Her wisdom was scholarly though she never learned to read. She led an unlikely army to victory after victory. Favored by the new king, she subsequently dies in flames, betrayed by traitors. The remarkable fact about this novel is that it comes to us under oath, from the witness stand. The official records of the Great Trial of 1431 , and of the Process of Rehabilitation of a quarter of a century later, are still preserved in the National Archives of France.