Mark Twain letters shed light on his life as a young writer in San Francisco

Bob Hirst, general editor of the Mark Twain Project, looks through a book of 1866 Sacramento Union newspapers at The Bancroft Library at the University of California Berkeley in Berkeley, Calif., Monday, May 4, 2015. Scholars at the University of California, Berkeley have pieced together a collection of dispatches written by Mark Twain when the author was a young newsman in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

Mark Twain scholars have uncovered and authenticated a trove of Twain's columns dating back to 1865 that give a glimpse into his life as a 29-year-old writer, filing 2,000 word letters six days a week for a Nevada newspaper.

Long before Mark Twain was the celebrated novelist and humorist we know him as today, he was a young newspaper writer in San Francisco, still having a tough time figuring out what to do with himself.

Now scholars at the University of California Berkeley have uncovered and authenticated a trove of Twain's columns dating back to 1865 that give a glimpse into his life back then, as a 29-year-old writer, filing 2,000 word letters six days a week for a Nevada newspaper.

Bob Hirst, general editor of the Mark Twain Project at UC Berkeley and curator of the Mark Twain papers, joins Take Two to explain what these letters reveal about Mark Twain.