By 1860 Twain was reading Voltaire, and when his book about Joan of Arc was published in 1896, he listed 11 academic sources to bolster his claims about the accuracy of details included in his book. His notebooks from 1855 are full of French language exercises that illustrate the painstaking process he used to learn the language. Twain was passionate about historical accuracy when writing about Joan of Arc, and he learned French to read available documentation about her life. The others needed no preparation and got none. And besides, it furnished me seven times the pleasure afforded me by any of the others twelve years of preparation, and two years of writing. Twain wrote, I like Joan of Arc best of all my books and it is the best I know it perfectly well. She was officially appointed as commander-in-chief of the French army by King Charles VII, but he later abandoned her when he could have intervened to save her from execution. Joan of Arc’s fascinating life ended when she was 19 years old–burned at the stake after leading thousands of men in military battles that were decisive in ending the Hundred Years War. This publication of Mark Twain’s book is packaged with Joan of Arc’s trial transcripts.
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