# Mark Twain's (Burlesque) Autobiography and First Romance

An audiobook by Mark Twain, read by LibriVox volunteers (35 min, English).

Mark Twain's (Burlesque) Autobiography and First Romance, a short volume, published by Sheldon & Co., NY in 1871, is Mark Twain's third book. It consists of two stories - First Romance, which had originally appeared in The Express in 1870, and A Burlesque Autobiography (bearing no relationship to Twain's actual life), which first appeared in Twain's Memoranda contributions to the Galaxy. Rather, the content consists of a few short stories of fictional characters who are supposedly part of Twain's lineage. In the final passage, Twain develops the story to a point of crisis, and then abruptly ends the tale, saying: “The truth is, I have got my hero (or heroine) into such a particularly close place, that I do not see how I am ever going to get him (or her) out of it again—and therefore I will wash my hands of the whole business, and leave that person to get out the best way that offers—or else stay there. I thought it was going to be easy enough to straighten out that little difficulty, but it looks different now. ” With that, Twain's "Autobiography" ends. The illustrations form an interesting aspect of this book. They have no relationship to the text of the book. Rather, they use…

[Listen](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/books/librivox/4136)
[Read the book](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/books/gutenberg/3175/read)