Joan of Arc, Mark Twain
Joan of Arc, Mark Twain
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Joan of Arc

Author: Mark Twain

Narrator: Michael Anthony

Unabridged: 15 hr 42 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/01/2006

Synopsis

Few people know that Mark Twain wrote a major work on Joan of Arc. Still fewer know that he considered it not only his most important but also his best work. Twain 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. He reached his conclusion about Joan’s unique place in history only after studying in detail accounts written by both sides: the French, for whom she raised an army to return the Dauphin to the throne, and the English, who fought the French in the Hundred Year’s War and were ultimately Joan’s executioners. This is a fascinating and remarkably accurate biography of the life and mission of Joan of Arc told by one of this country’s greatest storytellers.

About Mark Twain

Mark Twain, pseudonym of Samuel L. Clemens (1835–1910), was born in Florida, Missouri, and grew up in Hannibal on the west bank of the Mississippi River. He attended school briefly and then at age thirteen became a full-time apprentice to a local printer. When his older brother Orion established the Hannibal Journal, Samuel became a compositor for that paper and then, for a time, an itinerant printer. With a commission to write comic travel letters, he traveled down the Mississippi. Smitten with the riverboat life, he signed on as an apprentice to a steamboat pilot. After 1859, he became a licensed pilot, but two years later the Civil War put an end to the steam-boat traffic. In 1861, he and his brother traveled to the Nevada Territory where Samuel became a writer for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, and there, on February 3, 1863, he signed a humorous account with the pseudonym Mark Twain. The name was a river man’s term for water “two fathoms deep” and thus just barely safe for navigation. In 1870 Twain married and moved with his wife to Hartford, Connecticut. He became a highly successful lecturer in the United States and England, and he continued to write.

About Michael Anthony

Michael Anthony is an actor and director with a lengthy resume in the Washington, DC, area.

Reviews

Goodreads review by DAVID ALVAREZ on May 31, 2015

Very lengthy but very detailed. A very godly woman who was persecuted by very evil men. Just like many men of God including Jesus himself evil has always tried to snuff out the good.......more

Goodreads review by Cory on November 06, 2020

Interesting but... In the general sense this is an interesting story. However I had trouble with the way Jesus and Mary were given such equal footing that Mary was essentially worshipped like God. I was bothered how Joan was portrayed as sinless; it made the account look fairy taled in nature. " And......more

Goodreads review by Juliet on January 26, 2012

There is no doubt that Joan of Arc is a figure who raises questions and inspires historians to find out more about her and the challenges she faced. In this book, Gower attempts to describe her life and achievements, but does so without any great understanding of writing a history. This not a terribl......more

Quotes

“I like Joan of Arc best of all my books; and it is the best; I know it perfectly well. 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. The others needed no preparation and got none.” Mark Twain

“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.” Edward Wagenknecht, author of Mark Twain: The Man and His Work  

“It is an extraordinary (and baffling) literary phenomenon that Mark Twain, who was not disposed to see God at work in the melancholy affairs of men, should have been so galvanized by the life and achievement of this young woman that he devoted years of his life to this book about her.” Thomas Howard, author of Chance or the Dance?

“Mark Twain comes furtively like Nicodemus at night with this tribute to one of God’s saints. In doing so he tells a secret about himself. 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.” Fr. George Rutler, author of The Cure d'Ars Today

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