Mark Twain

Twain continues to be a strong and vital presence in American literary studies. This year scholarly commentary has appeared on a wide variety of topics, some of which reprises material that has been a part of the scholarly record, some of which is tied to literary anniversaries.

i. Editions and Collections of Twain's Writings

This year saw a number of volumes offering Mark Twain's own words and works in a variety of anthology or multivolume formats. Leading the group is a collection of previously unpublished essays by Twain, from the general editor of the Mark Twain Project, Robert H. Hirst. Who Is Mark Twain? (HarperCollins) presents 24 short pieces that cover a mix of genres, including sketches, autobiography, literary criticism, fables, and parables. Twenty-two of the pieces come straight from the Mark Twain Papers; the other two are from a file of manuscripts originally kept by Twain's sister Pamela. While most of these works have been available to scholars, especially as limited editions published by the University of California Press, this is the first time they are offered to a general reading audience. In his introduction to the volume, Hirst comments that "unlike most writers, Mark Twain was not embarrassed by his 'literary remains' even when they were failures." Later he writes, "Taken together, these short works give us a window into Mark Twain's literary workshop, a fresh glimpse of his remarkable talent, lavished even on work he decided, for various reasons, not to publish." Readers might see the collection as uneven and therefore as indicative of Hirst's point about Twain's acceptance of failures. They might also wonder about its organization: the pieces could have been more usefully organized chronologically to demonstrate Twain's approach to and success at writing.

Alan Gribben and Jeffrey Alan Melton take a chronological approach in Mark Twain on the Move: A Travel Reader (Alabama). Gribben and Melton include substantial portions of Twain's five major travel books—The Innocents Abroad, Roughing It, A Tramp Abroad, Life on the Mississippi, and Following the Equator. The collection is a useful introduction to Twain as a travel writer and, like Who Is Mark Twain?, aims to broaden readers' exposure to his writing. Importantly, the collection demonstrates Twain's connection to the tradition of travel writing and shows the connections between his maturing voice and the experience of travel. Gribben and Melton offer brief introductions to each section; their introduction to the full volume ties Twain to the general experience of travel and its specialized genres. Choosing passages from Twain's works is a daunting task. Gribben and Melton do well with their choices and manage to give a broad look at the physical, intellectual, and cultural impact of travel. They conclude: "By contrast with nearly all of the earlier collections that have sampled Twain's travel works, the present volume more authentically introduces this neglected Mark Twain, a man en route, out of his comfortable element, on the road, on the seas, on trains, matching his travel skills against the inconveniences and hazards of living away from home and earning the thrills and diversions that the unfamiliar can bring."

While travel is not a central focus of Gary Scharnhorst's Mainly the Truth: Interviews with Mark Twain (Alabama), Twain's experiences as a celebrity and a frequent subject for journalists cover an extensive itinerary. The material covers interviews published from November 1874 through May 1910, and Scharnhorst uses most of the same chronological categories he used in his comprehensive edition Mark Twain: The Complete Interviews (see AmLS 2006, pp. 97-98). Instead of the original 256 interviews, however, this slimmed-down edition, aimed at general readers, contains excerpts of 128. In Scharnhorst's words, "I have designed this edition to be something of a buffet, a variety of flavors to be tasted, a fair sampling of a full-course meal." The buffet whets the appetite as we hear Twain expound on a full variety of social and cultural issues: from writing habits to plans to publish his autobiography, from human nature to the possibilities of human progress, from race...