Some people might say that banning the release of your own autobiography until 100 years after your death might seem just a tad arrogant.

Others might see such a move as strikingly optimistic at best, to even assume that anyone would care to read said autobiography after such an extended period.

But when it comes to the personal life story of Samuel Langhorne Clemens aka Mark Twain (which has been under lock and key for 100 years)... those people are almost certainly going to be proven wrong...

For anyone unfamiliar with the man, he was one of America's greatest writers and humorists.  He was an outspoken, sometimes controversial  man, and yet was an almost universally loved public figure too.

He penned the American classics 'Tom Sawyer' and 'Huckleberry Finn' along with a literal mountain of other work.  He toured the world as a lecturer and public speaker. He was awarded the highest scholastic honorary degree from Oxford University England (Literary Doctor). He was a firm friend with Nikola Tesla, the pair spending much time together at Telsa's laboratory. In the latter half of his life Clemens rubbed shoulders with presidents and tycoons, gaining friendship and respect from them all.   He was, to put it quite simply, a remarkable man, in a remarkable time.

He was born on November 30, 1835. That same month Halley's Comet passed by the Earth. Many years later in 1909, Clemens stated:

I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: 'Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.'

Stunningly Clemens' prediction was totally accurate and on April 21st, 1910, just one day after Halley's Comet made a spectacularly close return visit (and the first ever to be photographed), Clemens suffered a heart attack and died.

Now 100 years on, the original manuscript of his autobiography, which has been kept in the vault of University of California, Berkeley, is being prepared for release in three volumes.

This treasure trove of a work created by the man who penned some of the most frequently quoted and misquoted catchphrases in the world, is said to run to almost a half a million words! Clemens spent the last decade of his life writing it and as to why he insisted that it should not hit the bookshops until a century after his passing, one can only speculate.

Perhaps he merely wanted to avoid offending any of his friends and associates, perhaps it was because he wanted to speak freely about the politics of his time without actually affecting them. Some speculate that his views on religion where too controversial  and he wanted to avoid the outrage that would surely have fallen upon him if he had spoken openly on the subject.

Whatever his reasons were, keeping his memoirs under wraps for so long has certainly achieved one thing.  It has ensured a 21st century interest in the thoughts of this  prolific and fascinating writer from the Victorian era, and to paraphrase the man himself :-

"Reports of his life are greatly anticipated."