Like the published volume in 1896, the earlier serialized version of Twain’s version of Joan in Harper’s Magazine (beginning April 1895) never mentioned Twain’s name. Both writers supported Dreyfus and those who took a stand to defend him such as Zola, and for Péguy, Bernard Lazare. During the Dreyfus Affair Twain and Charles Péguy were both composing literary works about Joan of Arc that reflected their own political and social commitments. Only toward the end of his life did she rise to the visible surface of the author’s preoccupations, with his public declaration of admiration in the 1903 essay “Saint Joan of Arc” (first published in Harper’s Monthly in December 1904).ĢTwain’s late-revealed interest in Joan must have been a bit of a surprise. Accustomed to the comic talent of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, the general reader was not yet aware that Mark Twain had been enthralled by the story of Joan of Arc as an adolescent. To the surprise of the public who discovered only belatedly that the text was not what it said it was – Jean-François Alden’s translation into contemporary English of the medieval French testimony of The Sieur Louis de Conte – the greater shock was that the author, an avowed skeptic, could portray so religious a subject. 1 An earlier version of this paper was presented in a workshop session organized by Ronald Jenn and B (.)ġMark Twain’s historical novel Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc by The Sieur Louis de Conte was serialized in 1895, then published in 1896 1.

Joan of arc twain