Letters from the Earth is a posthumously published work of celebrated American author Mark Twain (1835–1910) collated by Bernard DeVoto.[1] It comprises essays written during a difficult time in Twain's life (1904–09), when he was deeply in debt and had recently lost his wife and one of his daughters.[2]The content concerns morality and religion and strikes a sarcastic — Twain's own term throughout the book — tone. Initially, another of his daughters, Clara Clemens, objected to its publication in March 1939,[2]probably because of its controversial and iconoclastic views on religion, claiming it presented a "distorted"[3]view of her father. Henry Nash Smithhelped change her position in 1960.[3]Clara explained her change of heart in 1962 saying that "Mark Twain belonged to the world" and that public opinion had become more tolerant.[2][4] She was also influenced to release the papers by her annoyance with Soviet reports that her father's ideas were being suppressed in the United States.[2] The papers were selected, edited and sequenced for the book in 1939 by Bernard DeVoto.[2]
