Dear Mark Twain: Letters from his Readers ed. by R. Kent Rasmussen (review)

This collection of letters written by contemporary readers of Mark Twain may be the most unusual item in the stream of what has been presented by scholars in pursuit of all aspects of Sam Clemens and his famous persona. Certainly, it provides a most unusual perspective, “truly fresh” as editor Kent Rasmussen says. The letters were mostly written by people Clemens did not know, starting in 1863, when he first adopted the pen name Mark Twain, and ending in 1910, the year he died, and they suggest what the average reader thought of Clemens as Mark Twain. They are from autograph seekers, appreciative fans, complainers, religious cranks, aspiring writers, beggars, condolence givers, commentators sending real-life examples of the fictions, and tourists reporting on how they used his travel books during their own travels (categories from John Lauber’s biography). Possibly the most famous correspondent was ex-President Rutherford Hayes, who reports on his family’s enjoyment of The Prince and the Pauper. Rasmussen insists that the letters are not fan mail, but rather “mirrors reflecting the images Clemens cast on the world.” In this metaphor, Rasmussen suggests how intriguing the letters might be for individual scholars, being new documents potentially revelatory of Mark Twain’s image(s) for the public and of Sam Clemens’ reputation as a writer.

The book arranges the material in a chronological fashion after the introduction by Rasmussen and a foreword by Ron Powers. Rasmussen drew from a pool of about a thousand letters; most were received when Clemens was in the States, while the largest number were written in the last decade of his life. The letters are sectioned by decades, each section prefaced with a brief timeline of events in Clemens’ life. Rasmussen enlivens the text with, among other things, reproductions of some of the letters and illustrations from books when appropriate to the letters.

After nearly every letter, Rasmussen prints a response from Clemens. As Rasmussen notes in his explanation of selection criteria, letters with a response had a high priority. In some cases, this response is a terse annotation: Clemens had a habit of scrawling such comments on the envelopes. In other cases, he writes an actual reply. Perhaps the most astonishing aspect of the collection is Rasmussen’s thumbnail biographical sketches of the correspondents. The prodigious effort implied in these brief summaries of tracking down details of mostly obscure individuals completes the circle of information for the letters. The value of completing that circle cannot be overestimated. While reading the letters gives us a glimpse into the public that consumed the books and articles signed “Mark Twain” or the public that followed the events of Clemens’ life as they unfolded in newspaper accounts, having details about each correspondent provides a kind of demographic for that public. At this level, any one interested in a history of reading in the United States will have new data.

Ron Powers says that reading the letters gave him the “fantods,” but in a good way: he felt transported “back up the river in time.” My own experience was one of smiles and giggles as well as moments of surprise—and also some laugh-out-loud moments at the responses from Clemens, who even in this most private of genres manages to fashion delightful comic phrasing.

The volume appears in the University of California Press “Jumping Frog” series, tagged as the “Undiscovered, Rediscovered, and Celebrated Writings of Mark Twain.” While these letters certainly rank as undiscovered, they also help us—not just scholars but any twenty-first century reader curious about a famous author and his public—rediscover and celebrate Sam Clemens as Mark Twain.