So begins of the letters, with Samuel Clemens anticipating his wedding to Olivia L. Langdon. The 338 letters in this volume document the first two years of a loving marriage that would last more than thirty years. They recount, in Clemens's own inimitable voice, a tumultuous time: a growing international fame, the birth of a sickly first child, and the near-fatal illness of his wife.At the beginning of 1870, fresh from the success of , Clemens is on "the long agony" of a lecture tour and planning to settle in Buffalo as editor of the . By the end of 1871, he has moved to Hartford and is again on tour, anticipating the publication of and the birth of his second child. The intervening letters show Clemens bursting with literary ideas, business schemes, and inventions, and they show him erupting with frustration, anger, and grief, but more often with dazzling humor and surprising self-revelation. In addition to , Clemens wrote some enduringly popular short pieces during this period, but he saved some of his best writing for private letters, many of which are published here for the first time.