File:Mark Twain's Map of Paris, 1870 - Cornell University Library.jpg

English: Mark Twain's Map of Paris.

This absurd satirical map of the Paris fortifications at the time of the Franco-Prussian war was originally published in September 1870, in the Buffalo Express. It was then reprinted with additional notes in The Galaxy for November 1870 "to satisfy the extraordinary demand for it which has arisen in military circles throughout the country." No summary could possibly do justice to Twain's own commentary, reproduced in its entirety at ID #1073.02; the later notes only add to the insane humor of his original "To the Reader." Regarding the unusual appearance of the map, Twain had a good explanation: "By an unimportant oversight I have engraved the map so that it reads wrong end first, except to left-handed people. I forgot that in order to make it right in print it should be drawn and engraved upside down. However, let the student who desires to contemplate the map stand on his head or hold it before her looking-glass. That will bring it right."

Twain himself explained that this map resulted from "sudden changes of mood in me, from deep melancholy to half insane tempests and cyclones of humor" upon the death of one of his close friends. "During one of these spasms of humorous possession I sent down to my newspaper office for a huge wooden capital M and turned it upside-down and carved a crude and absurd map of Paris upon it, and published it, along with a sufficiently absurd description of it, with guarded and imaginary compliments of it bearing the signatures of General Grant and other experts. The Franco-Prussian war was in everybody's mouth at the time, and the map would have been valuable - if it had been valuable. It wandered to Berlin, and the American students there got much satisfaction out of it. They would carry it to the big beer halls and sit over it at a beer table and discuss it with violent enthusiasm and apparent admiration, in English, until their purpose was accomplished, which was to attract the attention of any German soldiers that might be present. When that had been accomplished, they would leave the map there and go off, jawing, to a little distance and wait for results. The results were never long delayed. The soldiers would pounce upon the map and discuss it in German and lose their tempers over it and blackguard it and abuse it and revile the author of it, to the students' entire content. The soldiers were always divided in opinion about the author of it, some of them believing he was ignorant, but well-intentioned; the others believing he was merely an idiot." Smith 2012, 1:231.