A Historical Guide to Mark Twain (Historical Guides to American Authors) (Historical Guides to American Authors)
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: September 13, 2002
Language: eng
Number of pages: 328
ISBN-13: 9780195132939
First sentence: Around the summer of 1874, Mark Twain rapidly read and digested W.E.H. Lecky's History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne (1869), writing the following in the margins: "If I have understood this book aright, it proves two things beyond shadow or question: 1: That Christianity is the very invention of Hell itself; 2 &amp; that Christianity is the most precious and elevating and ennobling boon ever vouchsafed to the world."