Red cloth binding with title and Adam with two monkeys image on the front board. Title on the spine.

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First Edition

“Extracts from Adam’s Diary: Translated from the Original Ms.” is a comic short story by the American humourist and writer Mark Twain. It was first published as a book in 1904, by Harper & Bros. with numerous illustrations by Frederick Strothmann. The story was first published in 1893, The Niagara Book (Buffalo: Underhill and Nichols), pp. 93–109.

Adam (based on Twain himself) describes how Eve (modelled after his wife Livy) gets introduced into the Garden of Eden, and how he has to deal with “this new creature with the long hair.”  The piece gives a humorous account of Genesis. It begins with the introduction of Eve, described as an annoying creature with a penchant for naming things, which Adam could do without. It moves on to detail Eve eating the apple and finding Cain, a perplexing creature which Adam cannot figure out. He devotes his ironically scientific mind to demystifying Cain’s species, thinking it a fish, then a kangaroo, then a bear. Eventually he figures out it is a human, like himself.

The work is humorous and ironic and gives a new spin on Genesis: few people have considered what life must have been like for Adam, who is discovering everything anew; the work does not consider God’s role at all; and eventually, despite his initial deep annoyance with Eve, Adam finds himself in love with her.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humourist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was lauded as the “greatest humourist the United States has produced,” and William Faulkner called him “the father of American literature”. His novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), the latter of which has often been called the “Great American Novel”.

Twain was raised in Hannibal, Missouri, which later provided the setting for Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. He served an apprenticeship with a printer and then worked as a typesetter, contributing articles to the newspaper of his older brother Orion Clemens. He later became a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River before heading west to join Orion in Nevada. He referred humorously to his lack of success at mining, turning to journalism for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise.  His humorous story “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” was published in 1865, based on a story that he heard at Angels Hotel in Angels Camp, California, where he had spent some time as a miner. The short story brought international attention and was even translated into French.  His wit and satire, in prose and in speech, earned praise from critics and peers, and he was a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists, and European royalty.

Twain earned a great deal of money from his writings and lectures but invested in ventures that lost most of it—such as the Paige Compositor, a mechanical typesetter that failed because of its complexity and imprecision. He filed for bankruptcy in the wake of these financial setbacks, but in time overcame his financial troubles with the help of Henry Huttleston Rogers. He eventually paid all his creditors in full, even though his bankruptcy relieved him of having to do so. Twain was born shortly after an appearance of Halley’s Comet, and he predicted that he would “go out with it” as well; he died the day after the comet made its closest approach to the Earth.