Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, by the Sieur Louis de Conte is an 1896 novel by Mark Twain which recounts the life of Joan of Arc.
The novel is presented as a translation by "Jean Francois Alden" of memoirs by Sieur Louis de Conte, a fictionalized version of Joan of Arc's page Louis de Contes. He has the same initials as Samuel Langhorne Clemens, Mark Twain's real name. The novel is divided into three sections according to Joan of Arc's development: a youth in Domrémy, a commander of the army of Charles VII of France, and a defendant at trial in Rouen. They are entitled "In Domremy", "In Court and Camp", and "Trial and Martyrdom". Its first book publication was in two volumes, with the second part "In Court and Camp" split between Volume 1 and Volume 2. Some modern editions note where Volume 1 leaves off and Volume 2 takes up; others do not.
The novel was first published as a serialization in Harper's Magazine beginning in April 1895. Twain was aware of his reputation as a comic writer and he asked that each installment appear anonymously so that readers would treat it seriously. Regardless, his authorship soon became known, and Harper and Brothers published the book edition with his name in May 1896.
Many events in the novel are fictionalized; however, the main events in the life of Joan are rendered faithfully.
Synopsis
thumb|upright=1.2|[[Harper's Magazine poster by Edward Penfield for the debut of Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (April 1895)]]
Introduction
The novel begins with "the Translator's Preface"; then follows a short note entitled "A Peculiarity of Joan of Arc's History" also written by "The Translator". Finally, a foreword is presented by "The Sieur Louis de Conte", who represents an actual person in the life of Joan of Arc but here is fictionalized by the author Mark Twain as a childhood playmate of Joan who later serves as her page and secretary. The "Translator's Preface" offers an overview of Joan of Arc's life, with heavy praise: "the character of Joan of Arc ... occupies the loftiest possible to human attainment". The short "Peculiarity" note explains, first, that many actual details about (the long-ago) life of Joan of Arc are uniquely established and known, having been recorded under oath in court documents that are preserved in the National Archives of France; and, that the "mass of added particulars" here are provided by Sieur de Conte, whom, the (fictional) Translator assures us, is reliable.
In the foreword, Twain's fictional Sieur Louis de Conte presents himself in the year 1492—more than 60 years after Joan of Arc's death in 1431—as writing his "Personal Recollections ..." about the life of Joan of Arc and his intimate relation to it: "I was with her from the beginning until the end". Here author Twain assigns his character Sieur de Conte to serve as the first-person narrator of his Joan of Arc story, and perhaps to serve as an alter-ego of the author in that role. Cultural historian Ted Gioia notes that Twain was "raised in a Southern culture that was deeply suspicious of – and sometimes openly hostile to – Roman Catholicism", but that in the novel Twain comes across as passionately Catholic.
Twain claimed to have worked harder on this book than any other. He wrote to H.H. Rogers, "I have never done any work before that cost so much thinking and weighing and measuring and planning and cramming." The published book lists 11 official sources as "authorities examined in verification of the truthfulness of this narrative". Historians today agree that Twain conducted the bulk of his investigation during his prolonged stay in Europe during the early 1890s, which included multiple stops in France. He apparently drew most of his information from the fifth volume of Jules Michelet's Histoire de France and Jules Quicherat's Proces de condamnation et de rehabilitation de Jeanne d’Arc. Joan of Arc's story was relatively unknown at that time, especially in English-speaking nations, which makes Twain's research noteworthy.
Twain based Joan of Arc's physical appearance on his daughter Susy Clemens, as he remembered her at age 17. He began writing the novel late in 1892, then set it aside until 1894; he finished the manuscript in 1895. He serialized an abridged version for magazine publication, then published the full-length book in 1896.
Reception
Twain's self-evaluation, and contemporary critics
Twain considered this work to be his best and most important. It was fairly well received in 1895 when first published. <blockquote>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.</blockquote>And she wrote that "Andrew Lang so much admired Father’s Joan that he suggested dedicating to him his own biography of the Maid."
As a child, Coley Taylor was Twain's neighbor in Redding, Connecticut, where Twain lived from 1908 until his death in 1910. He told the story of the day when he approached Twain as a young boy to profess his adulation for Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Upon hearing the boy's praises, Twain suddenly took on the mien of a vexed schoolteacher. "You shouldn’t read those books about bad boys," he said, wagging his finger in Taylor's face. "My best book is my Recollections of Joan of Arc."
American author and historian Bernard DeVoto was also critical of Joan of Arc, calling it "mawkish". De Voto also claims that Twain "was uncomfortable in the demands of tragedy, formalizing whatever could not be sentimentalized." Maxwell Geismar delivered a scathing review, describing it as Twain's worst book: "It is difficult to find anything of interest in Joan of Arc – except its badness". Twain scholar Louis J. Budd said that Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc "has disgraced Twain posthumously with several levels of readers", even though "it met general approval in 1896".
Susan Harris expresses befuddlement at this work's placement in Twain's body of works: "By the time Twain is writing Recollections, he's not a believer. He is anti-Catholic, and he doesn't like the French. So he writes a book about a French-Catholic-martyr? Ostensibly, it doesn't make a lot of sense."