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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Figtree3, post: 591003, member: 33&quot;]I heard from Dr. Jeremy Schraffenberger, the multi-genre editor of the <i>North American Review</i>. He also has a special interest in the history of the publication. He doesn&#039;t know exactly about this, and finds it intriguing. He sent some interesting information and theories after I sent him a list of the essays in this book and also sent him a link to this thread:</p><p><br /></p><p>&quot; I&#039;m putting together some clues, though in the end I don&#039;t have <i>the </i>answer. Here&#039;s what I&#039;m thinking. The final piece collected in this book is from January 1905. Twain, of course, published twenty-five chapters from his autobiography in the NAR beginning in September 1906. It would make sense for someone collecting Twain&#039;s writing in this way <i>not </i>to include these chapters, which were themselves eventually collected and published together, along with more chapters of his autobiography. There is one <i>additional </i>essay, however, that appeared in the NAR in March 1905 called &quot;The Czar&#039;s Soliloquy&quot; that does <i>not </i>appear in this book. So it seems clear to me that the book was created between Jan. and Mar. 1905 or else &quot;The Czar&#039;s Soliloquy&quot; would be in its pages, too. </p><p><br /></p><p>&quot;1905 was a momentous year for Twain because he turned 70. The owner of the NAR at the time, George Harvey, threw a big party for him at the<a href="http://twain.lib.virginia.edu/onstage/70bday1a.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://twain.lib.virginia.edu/onstage/70bday1a.html" rel="nofollow"> Red Room at Delmonico&#039;s in New York</a>. I can imagine--though this is <i>only speculation--</i>that Harvey or someone else affiliated with the NAR might have bound the essays that had appeared in the <i>North American Review</i> for this occasion, either as a gift to Twain himself or as a kind of party favor. After all, Harvey had paster busts of Twain made as gifts to all 170 guests who were present. Harvey was extremely wealthy and would pay Twain an enormous amount of money to publish chapters from his autobiography, so binding these essays seems like an easy thing for him to have done. At any rate, I find it likely that the book is connected with Twain&#039;s birthday celebration, which was a big deal at the time. I hope this helps somewhat!&quot;</p><p><br /></p><p>He also said that you can write to him with more questions, through the general address for the NAR. Since we don&#039;t normally put email addresses in our posts here, please go to the NAR website to find their address at the bottom of the page. <a href="https://northamericanreview.org/" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://northamericanreview.org/" rel="nofollow">https://northamericanreview.org/</a> -- And he normally wouldn&#039;t be the person initially reading the email so it would be good to say that the question or message is for him.</p><p>[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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