Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc

Book excerpt: A serious, impassioned, meticulously researched story about a compelling heroine, the Maid of Orleans, Twain viewed the work both as a bid to be accepted as a serious writer and as a gift of love to his favorite daughter, Susy, who would die tragically three months after Joan of Arc was published. Although set in 15th century Europe, Joan of Arc is a key text for anyone who would understand the ambivalence that greeted the New Women in turn-of-the-century America. Twain's novel illuminates some of the major currents, and contradictions, of turn-of-the-century life and thought.