After 100 years, the wait is almost over for the full text of Mark Twain's auto-biography. 

Twain left behind 5,000 unedited pages of memoirs when he died in 1910, together with handwritten notes saying that he did not want them to hit bookshops for at least a century.

When you read some of the work which he compiled late in his life, that is pretty understandable. Twain's opinions on topics such as American Imperialism and religion to name two topics would possibly tarnished his reputation.

Sam Clemens aka Twain was a businessman and was one of the leading proponents for improving US Copyright law to protect authors. He hoped that his work would continue to provide income for his surviving daughter and heirs.

Now after 100 years, the University of California, Berkeley, where the manuscript is in a vault, will release the first volume of Mark Twain's autobiography in November 2010. They are expecting this to end up as a three-volume set which will shed light on many of Twain's most misunderstood opinions.

Michael Shelden, who this year published Man in White, an account of Twain's final years, says that some of his privately held views could have hurt his public image is quoted in the Independent as saying,

"He had doubts about God, and in the autobiography, he questions the imperial mission of the US in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. He's also critical of [Theodore] Roosevelt, and takes the view that patriotism was the last refuge of the scoundrel. Twain also disliked sending Christian missionaries to Africa. He said they had enough business to be getting on with at home: with lynching going on in the South, he thought they should try to convert the heathens down there."

Personally, I can't wait to read the entire work and understand more of what Twain really thought.