Mark Twain, p. 85-103

Another volume of Mark Twain's correspondence—this one reproducing letters from the early period of his national recognition—joins five previous installments issued by the Mark Twain Project and the University of California Press. A maverick collection of revisionist essays raises questions about topics long taken for granted. Several other articles over familiar arguments, but with fresh implications and phrasing, about the faults of Tom Sawyer as a character and the failings of Twain's conclusion for Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. There is a new historical guide to Mark Twain. Pudd'nhead Wilson receives sophisticated exegeses. Inexpensive paperbound editions of Twain's literary works continue to roll off the presses, to the convenience of instructors and students. Biographers are temporarily on vacation, but Mark Twain's often-scanted travel writings receive full-length study. A book illustrator whose name is linked with Twain's—True Williams—finally gets detailed biographical treatment. Despite a bumper crop of outstanding essays on Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the debate over the appropriateness of assigning Twain's master-work in American classrooms seems to take a breather. Otherwise there is something for nearly everyone in this year's publications.

i Editions

The sixth volume in the Mark Twain Project edition of the correspondence, Mark Twain's Letters, 1874-1875, ed. Michael B. Frank and Harriet Elinor Smith (Calif.), continues the editorial practice (which has won so much favor with Twain scholars) of establishing a "plain text" with a view toward making the letters "easier to read than they are in the original documents." A helpful running head at the top of each page reminds the reader of Samuel Clemens's age at the time the missive was written. As is customary in these volumes, the unstinting annotations, infallible genealogical charts, and generous appendixes are detailed and inclusive. Over the course of these 348 letters we find the author moving into his deluxe Hartford house, finishing The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and a book of sketches, and launching a successful dramatization of The Gilded Age. From a literary perspective, perhaps the most significant achievements are the appearance in the Atlantic Monthly of his "A True Story, Repeated Word for Word as I Heard It" and seven installments of "Old Times on the Mississippi." The letters themselves, many of them previously unpublished, offer superb examples of vintage Twain. On 4 September 1874 he smugly informs John Brown of Edinburg that "I gave the P. O. Department a blast in the papers about sending misdirected letters of mine back to the writers for reshipment, & got a blast in return . . . from the New York postmaster. But I notice that misdirected letters find me, now, without any unnecessary fooling around." To a Boston publisher he snarls: "I see you announce your humble servant among your Treasure Trove series. Don't do it anymore. . . . I shall be a very old fool before I repeat the courtesy (i.e. folly) of giving my permission to print a sketch of mine in any book but mine." To his lecture agent James Redpath he writes apologetically in 1874, "Sitting in church to-day, thinking (as usual) of everything but the sermon, I got to feeling ashamed of always making agreements with you & breaking them. . . . I would like to deliver & repeat 'Roughing It,' or do that once & the Sandwich Islands once. . . . Just suit yourself. . . . For in this thing I am only trying to get back on good terms with my conscience for treating you so shabbily." He encourages P. T. Barnum to save and send him the bizarre fan mail that besieged the showman: "It is an admirable lot of letters. Headless mice, four-legged hens, human-handed sacred bulls, 'professional' gypsies, ditto 'Sacasians,' deformed human beings anxious to trade on their horrors, school-teachers who can't spell,—it is a perfect feast of queer literature! Again I beseech you, don't burn a single specimen, but remember that all are wanted & possess value in the eyes of your friend Saml. L. Clemens." We can likewise be glad that so many of Mark Twain's recipients elected to preserve rather than destroy his thousands of...