The digital edition of Mark Twain's Notebooks offers a browsable list of all of Mark Twain's extant notebooks and a search page that assists discovery with keyword searches. It offers digital images for all of Mark Twain's extant notebooks and transcriptions for those notebooks as they become available.

Quick Start

  • Browse the catalogue below by title, date, or location
    → Click notebook title → View notebook page images → access transcriptions, when available
  • Go to Search in the header above for specific terms
    → Enter keyword and apply filters → Click results or notebook title → Access relevant passages for notebooks available online or explore page images

The Mark Twain Project thanks the following repositories for their generous permission to reproduce images from their digital collections:

Notebook 1: McKinney Family-Clemens 1.2, Archives and Special Collections, Vassar College Library.

Notebooks 15 and 16: YCAL MSS 852, Samuel Langhorne Clemens Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

Notebook 32: Container 1.5, Samuel Langhorne Clemens Collection, Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin.

Notebook #1: “What I Was at 19–20”
Transcription Online
Jun 1855 to Jul 1855 Locations: Missouri, Iowa Originally published in Notebooks & Journals, Volume I: 1855–1873
Notebook #2: “Get a Little Memorandum-Book”
Transcription Online
Apr 1857 to Jul 1857 Locations: Mississippi River Originally published in Notebooks & Journals, Volume I: 1855–1873
Notebook #3: “A Pilot Now, Full Fledged”
Transcription Online
Nov 1860 to Mar 1861 Locations: Mississippi River Originally published in Notebooks & Journals, Volume I: 1855–1874
Notebook #4: “By Way of Angel's . . . to Jackass Hill”
Transcription Online
Jan 1865 to Feb 1865 Locations: California Originally published in Notebooks & Journals, Volume I: 1855–1873
Notebook #5: “Drifting About the Outskirts of the World”
Transcription Online
Mar 1866 to Sep 1866 Locations: San Francisco, Sandwich Islands Originally published in Notebooks & Journals, Volume I: 1855–1873
Notebook #6: “The Loveliest Fleet of Islands”
Transcription Online
Mar 1866 to Apr 1866 Locations: San Francisco, Sandwich Islands Originally published in Notebooks & Journals, Volume I: 1855–1873
Notebook #7: “A Doomed Voyage”
Transcription Online
Dec 1866 to Jan 1867 Locations: San Francisco to New York City Originally published in Notebooks & Journals, Volume I: 1855–1873
Notebook #8: “The Great Pleasure Excursion to Europe and the Holy Land”
Transcription Online
May 1867 to Jul 1867 Locations: New York City, Quaker City Originally published in Notebooks & Journals, Volume I: 1855–1873
Notebook #9: “A Funeral Excursion Without a Corpse”
Transcription Online
Aug 1867 to Oct 1867 Locations: Quaker City Originally published in Notebooks & Journals, Volume I: 1855–1873
Notebook #10: “The Camping Grounds of the Patriarchs”
Transcription Forthcoming
Aug 1867 to Dec 1867 Locations: Quaker City, Washington D.C. Originally published in Notebooks & Journals, Volume I: 1855–1873
Notebook #11: “Left San Francisco for New York ... July 6, 1868”
Transcription Forthcoming
Jul 1868 to Jul 1868 Locations: San Francisco to New York City Originally published in Notebooks & Journals, Volume I: 1855–1873
Notebook #12: “My First Experience in Dictating”
Transcription Forthcoming
Jun 1873 to Jul 1873 Locations: England, Belgium Originally published in Notebooks & Journals, Volume I: 1855–1873
Notebook #13: “To Get the World & the Devil Out of My Head”
Transcription Forthcoming
May 1877 to Jul 1877 Locations: New York City, Bermuda Originally published in Notebooks & Journals, Volume II : 1877–1883
Notebook #14: “Fly to Some Little Corner of Europe”
Transcription Forthcoming
Nov 1877 to Jul 1878 Locations: Germany Originally published in Notebooks & Journals, Volume II : 1877–1883
Notebook #15: “A New and Better Plan for the Book”
Transcription Forthcoming
Jul 1878 to Aug 1878 Locations: Switzerland Originally published in Notebooks & Journals, Volume II : 1877–1883
Notebook #16: “Poking About with Red Guidebooks”
Transcription Forthcoming
Aug 1878 to Oct 1878 Locations: Switzerland, Italy Originally published in Notebooks & Journals, Volume II : 1877–1883
Notebook #17: “To Get Through with This Painful Trial”
Transcription Forthcoming
Oct 1878 to Feb 1879 Locations: Italy, Munich Originally published in Notebooks & Journals, Volume II : 1877–1883
Notebook #18: “Neither Winter Nor Summer Nor Morals”
Transcription Forthcoming
Feb 1879 to Sep 1879 Locations: Paris, Belgium, Holland, England Originally published in Notebooks & Journals, Volume II : 1877–1883
Notebook #19: “Ask Charley”
Transcription Forthcoming
Jul 1880 to Jan 1882 Locations: Hartford, Canada Originally published in Notebooks & Journals, Volume II : 1877–1883
Notebook #20: “A Profane & Irritable Man in a Hurry”
Transcription Forthcoming
Jan 1882 to Feb 1883 Locations: Hartford, Mississippi River, Elmira Originally published in Notebooks & Journals, Volume II : 1877–1884
Notebook #21: “Setting Down Volumes of Literary Stuff”
Transcription Forthcoming
Apr 1882 to May 1882 Locations: Mississippi River Originally published in Notebooks & Journals, Volume II : 1877–1883
Notebook #22: “I Must Speculate in Something”
Transcription Forthcoming
Mar 1883 to Sep 1884 Locations: Hartford Originally published in Notebooks & Journals, Volume III: 1883–1891
Notebook #23: “Telling a Story As Only He Can Tell It”
Transcription Forthcoming
Sep 1884 to Apr 1885 Locations: Hartford, Lecture Circuit Originally published in Notebooks & Journals, Volume III: 1883–1892
Notebook #24: “The Nation Holds Its Breath”
Transcription Forthcoming
Apr 1885 to Aug 1885 Locations: Hartford Originally published in Notebooks & Journals, Volume III: 1883–1891
Notebook #25: “My Fiftieth Year”
Transcription Forthcoming
Aug 1885 to Mar 1886 Locations: Hartford Originally published in Notebooks & Journals, Volume III: 1883–1891
Notebook #26: “I Do Not Expect to Publish”
Transcription Forthcoming
Mar 1886 to Jun 1887 Locations: Hartford Originally published in Notebooks & Journals, Volume III: 1883–1891
Notebook #27: “Curse All Business. I Can't Understand Even the ABC of It.”
Transcription Forthcoming
Aug 1887 to Jul 1888 Locations: Hartford Originally published in Notebooks & Journals, Volume III: 1883–1891
Notebook #28: “Just Burying Myself . . . in a Book”
Transcription Forthcoming
Jul 1888 to May 1889 Locations: Hartford Originally published in Notebooks & Journals, Volume III: 1883–1891
Notebook #29: “One of the Vanderbilt Gang”
Transcription Forthcoming
May 1889 to Aug 1890 Locations: Hartford Originally published in Notebooks & Journals, Volume III: 1883–1891
Notebook #30: “I Am Out in the Cold”
Transcription Forthcoming
Aug 1890 to Jun 1891 Locations: Hartford Originally published in Notebooks & Journals, Volume III: 1883–1891
Notebook #31: Notebook 31
Transcription Forthcoming
Aug 1891 to Jul 1892 Previously unpublished.
Notebook #32: Notebook 32
Transcription Forthcoming
May 1892 to Jan 1893 Previously unpublished.
Notebook #33: Notebook 33
Transcription Forthcoming
Mar 1893 to Jul 1894 Previously unpublished.
Notebook #34: Notebook 34
Transcription Forthcoming
Mar 1895 to Dec 1895 Previously unpublished.
Notebook #35: Notebook 35
Transcription Forthcoming
May 1895 to Oct 1895 Previously unpublished.
Notebook #36: Notebook 36
Transcription Forthcoming
Dec 1895 to Mar 1896 Previously unpublished.
Notebook #37: Notebook 37
Transcription Forthcoming
Jan 1896 to Apr 1896 Previously unpublished.
Notebook #38: Notebook 38
Transcription Forthcoming
May 1896 to Jul 1896 Previously unpublished.
Notebook #39: Notebook 39
Transcription Forthcoming
Sep 1896 to Jan 1897 Previously unpublished.
Notebook #40: Notebook 40
Transcription Forthcoming
Jan 1897 to Jul 1899 Previously unpublished.
Notebook #41: Notebook 41
Transcription Forthcoming
Jan 1897 to Jul 1897 Previously unpublished.
Notebook #42: Notebook 42
Transcription Forthcoming
Jun 1897 to Mar 1900 Previously unpublished.
Notebook #43: Notebook 43
Transcription Forthcoming
Jan 1900 to Dec 1900 Previously unpublished.
Notebook #44: Notebook 44
Transcription Forthcoming
Jan 1901 to Dec 1901 Previously unpublished.
Notebook #45: Notebook 45
Transcription Forthcoming
Jan 1902 to Dec 1902 Previously unpublished.
Notebook #46: Notebook 46
Transcription Forthcoming
Jan 1903 to Dec 1904 Previously unpublished.
Notebook #47: Notebook 47
Transcription Forthcoming
Jan 1904 to Dec 1904 Previously unpublished.
Notebook #48: Notebook 48
Transcription Forthcoming
Jan 1905 to Dec 1908 Previously unpublished.
Notebook #49: Notebook 49
Transcription Forthcoming
Jan 1910 to Apr 1910 Previously unpublished.