Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant

Sinopsis

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The Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant are an autobiography, in two volumes, of Ulysses S. Grant, the 18th President of the United States. The work focuses on his military career during the Mexican–American War and the American Civil War. The volumes were written in the last year of Grant's life, amid increasing pain from terminal throat cancer and in an effort to restore the Grant family's finances and provide for his widow after his bankruptcy at the hands of an early Ponzi scheme. The set was published by Mark Twain shortly after Grant's death in July 1885. Twain, a literary superstar and personal friend of Grant, created a marketing system to reach millions of veterans with a patriotic appeal just as the general's death was being mourned. Ten thousand agents canvassed the North for orders, following a script that Twain had devised. Many were Union veterans dressed in their old uniforms, who went door-to-door offering the two-volume set at prices ranging from $3.50 to $12, depending on the binding ($130 to $430 in 2025). These efforts sold 350,000 two-volume sets in advance of the book's actual printing. This made the Memoirs one of the bestselling books of the 19th century. In its first year, it outsold even the publishing behemoth Uncle Tom's Cabin. For comparison, the 1876 publication of memoirs of Grant's colleague William Tecumseh Sherman was deemed a great success for selling 25,000 copies in its first decade. Grant's widow, Julia, received about $450,000 ($16,100,000 in 2025) from Twain during the first three years of publication. Despite being explicitly written for money, and with a focus on those aspects of Grant's life most likely to induce sales, the combination of an honest man exploited in a financial scheme and then marked for death by cancer lent the Memoirs immense contemporary interest. The Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant received universal acclaim on its publication and has remained highly regarded by the general public, military historians, and literary critics. Grant's prose has been praised as lean, intelligent and effective. He candidly depicts his battles against both the Confederates and his internal Army foes.

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Detalles

Tipo

Libro

Estreno

1 de enero de 1885

Géneros

memoir, autobiography

Creado por

Ulysses S. Grant

Países

United States