When deciding to digitize and annotate a text, the next question is inevitably what was chosen and why. This essay's purpose is to elucidate that question as much as possible for the readers of this site. I originally chose to work with Twain's Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (1896) after rejecting it for use in my Honors Thesis. In part, its length determined its exclusion, as well as my interest in focusing on poetry. However, having been written during the end of the Victorian period by a man who grew up during its height, the novel is rife with Victorian ideas about womanhood that complemented my study of Felicia Hemans's poem "Joan of Arc, In Rheims" (1852). Also, modern scholarship is still interested in this text, as its inclusion in a 1992 Library of America anthology shows. In short, a didactic handbook disguised as a serious novel concerned with the ideals of Victorian behavior was simply too interesting to ignore.

The book was written, in part, as a celebration of Twain's beloved wife Livy, who was in many ways the ideal of True Womanhood. It was also to commemorate his favorite daughter, Susy, who died the year before its publication. And it functioned as a manual of proper behavior for his other two daughters, Clara and Jean, with whom Twain never shared as close a relationship as he had with Susy. The scanning of this book was also undertaken to preserve a version of it for the future, since the book itself is an original 1896 publication and beginning to show its age.

I chose two chapters to annotate and explicate. My focus was on True Womanhood, and how Joan is the ideal example of it. I also looked for examples of Twain's commemoration of Livy in the text. I sought examples and explanations from outside sources, and added information into the annotations to clarify their significance.

I selected chapters three and five to annotate, as well as the illustrated cover, because they contain the some of the best examples of my focus on True Womanly behavior, as well as more figurative meaning. Later chapters, although longer, are more action-oriented and descriptive instead of symbolic, and are less interesting to the close reader.

The result has been a collection of short essays, a scanned text, digital annotations and a collection of links that I hope will be of help and interest to other Joan of Arc and Twain scholars.