"Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc by The Sieur Louis De Conte, (Her Page and Secretary)" by Mark Twain. Illustrated by G.B. Cutts, published by Harper and Brothers, New York and London, MCMXXVI (1926), last copyright 1924, printing code I-A (September 1926). Provenance: "Ora Espinosa. Cupertino, Calif." is ink written inside front cover.

Hard boards; original cloth with paper illustration on the front board [slightly bent boards, wear, soiling, stains: see photos], 5.3/4" x 9.1/4", color frontispiece; 596 pages + 12 monochrome plates on glossy paper; old dump stain at the upper margin of the pages [no smell]; a few page creases, good condition.

Mark Twain wrote a major work on St. Joan of Arc, he considered it not only his most important but also his BEST WORK spending 12 years in research and many months in France doing archival research.

According to the leading Mark Twain scholar and collector of books, Kevin MacDonnell, this last completed novel to be published in Twain's lifetime, is his finest and most poetical book. The story is based on historical facts studied by Mark Twain.

"The details of the life of Joan of Arc from a biography which is unique among the world's biographies in one respect: It is the only story of a human life which comes to us under oath, the only one which comes to us 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, and they furnish with remarkable fullness the facts of her life. The history of no other life of that remote time is known with either the certainty or the comprehensiveness that attaches to hers. The Sieur Louis de Conte is faithful to her official history in his Personal Recollections, and thus as his trustworthiness is unimpeachable; but his mass of added particulars must depend from credit upon his own word alone."

"The work wrought by Joan of Arc may fairly be regarded as ranking any recorded in history, when one considers the conditions under which it was undertaken, the obstacles in the way, and the means at her disposal. Caesar carried conquest far, but he did with the trained and confident veterans of Rome, and was a trained soldier himself; and Napoleon swept away the disciplined armies of Europe, but he also was a trained soldier...but Joan of Arc, a mere child in years, ignorant, unlettered, a poor village girl unknown and without influence, found a great nation lying in chains, helpless and hopeless under an alien domination, its treasury bankrupt, its soldiers disheartened and dispersed, all spirit torpid, all courage dead in the hearts of the people through long years of foreign and domestic outrage..."

"She led it from victory to victory, she turned back the tide of Hundred Year's War, she fatally crippled the English power, and died with the earned title of DELIVERER OF FRANCE, which she bears to this day. And for all reward, the French King whom she had crowned stood supine and indifferent while French priests took the noble child, the most innocent, the most lovely, the most adorable the ages have produced, and burned her alive at the stake."

"...the character of Joan of Arc is unique. It can be measured by the standards of all times without misgiving or apprehension as to the result...When we reflect that her century was the brutalest, the wickedest, the rottenest in history since the darkest ages, we are lost in wonder at the miracle of such a product from such a soil. The contrast between her and her century is the contrast between day and night. She was truthful when lying was the common speech of men; she was honest when honesty was become a lost virtue; she was a keeper of promises when the keeping of a promise was expected of no one; she gave her great mind to great thoughts and great purposes when other great minds wasted themselves upon pretty fancies or upon poor ambitions; she was modest and fine and delicate when to be loud and coarse might be said to be universal; she was full of pity when a merciless cruelty was the rule..."

[Mark Twain, excerpts from the Preface]

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