Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Reception

Reception

Twain considered this, his last finished novel, to be his best and most important work, a view not shared by critics then or since. Iconoclastic author George Bernard Shaw, in the preface to his own play, Saint Joan, accuses Twain of being "infatuated" with Joan of Arc. Shaw says that Twain "romanticizes" the story of Joan, reproducing a legend that the English conducted a trial deliberately rigged to find Joan guilty of witchcraft and heresy. Recent scholarship of the trial transcripts, however, suggests that Twain's belief may have been closer to the truth than Shaw was willing to accept.

American author and historian Bernard De Voto was also critical of Joan of Arc, calling it “mawkish”. De Voto also claims, “he (Twain) was uncomfortable in the demands of tragedy, formalizing whatever could not be sentimentalized.”

American author Maxwell Geismar delivered a scathing review, “Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, in 1896 was Sam Clemens’ (Twain) worst book…It is difficult to find anything of interest in Joan of Arc – except its badness.”

Leading Twain scholar Louis J. Budd said, “Although Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc has disgraced Twain posthumously with several levels of readers, it met general approval in 1896.”

At the time of its publishing, one paper positively reviewed Twain’s work stating, “We meet a dignified, ennobled, hero-worshipping Mark Twain. His language has undergone a startling change. Not flippancy, but pathos, meets us on every page; the sardonic mocking spirit has been conquered by the fair Maid of Orleans, and where aforetime we met laughter, we now meet tears.”

Twain’s daughter, Clara Clemens, also stated, “Andrew Lang so much admired Father’s Joan that he suggested dedicating to him his own biography of the Maid.”