Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc

Published in 1896 by Harper Brothers following serialisation in Harpers Magazine, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc was Twain's ninth novel and the one he considered his best work. Although the Joan story is essentially true, this account by Twain is fictionalised, with the author – who kept his identity hidden for the serialisation – claiming that it had been 'freely translated' from an original manuscript by one Jean Francois Alden. While the plot is familiar enough – suffice to say that Joan doesn't come out of it in a great condition – the means by which the story is related is novel, with Twain inventing a page as the narrator who manages to be close to Joan from her childhood all the way through to acting as a defendant during her trial. As with A Connecticut Yankee, such a device does create problems with the plotting, but on the whole it works well enough to get Joan's story across on a personal level.