Mark Twain 
Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc 

The fictional memoir of the fifteenth-century French heroine by the author of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.   Mark Twain’s final novel—and, by his own account, his best—is a fictional record of the life of Joan of Arc, as recorded by her loyal page and secretary, the Sieur Louis de Conte. In it, the celebrated satirist shows his great admiration for the Maid of Orléans. Beginning with her humble childhood in the French village of Domrémy, de Conte recounts Joan’s visions of Archangels and her divine quest to take control of the French army and liberate her country from the English at the age of seventeen.   From her remarkable victory over the English at Orléans, her Bloodless March to Rheims, and the coronation of King Charles VII, the story progresses finally to Joan’s tragic defeat and imprisonment, the high drama of her trial, and her execution at the hands of the English.</