Current Mark Twain
Bibliography

James S. Leonard
The Citadel

Current Mark Twain Bibliography is a means of giving notice of what’s new in Mark Twain scholarship. Where annotations are used, they are in most cases descriptive blurbs provided by publishers (or in some cases, by authors) with value judgments edited out. If you have recently published something that you would like to have included in this list, send it to me by e-mail (leonardj@citadel.edu), or by other means.

Books

Fulton, Joe B. Mark Twain in the Margins: The Quarry Farm Marginalia and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. University of Alabama Press, 2000. 205 pp. $34.95. ISBN 0-8173-1033-9. The common characterization of Mark Twain as an uneducated and improvisational writer took hold largely because of the novelist's own frequent claims about his writing practices. But using recently discovered evidence--Twain’s marginal notes in books he consulted as he worked on A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court--Joe Fulton argues for a reconsideration of scholarly views about Twain's writing process, showing that this great American author crafted his novels with careful research and calculated design. Fulton's transcriptions of marginalia and underlinings found in books in the Quarry Farm library comprise about half of this book. [Text drawn from dust jacket and Mark Twain Forum book notice.]

Griffith, Clark. Achilles and the Tortoise: Mark Twain's Fictions. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1998. Pp. iv + 272. Notes, bibliography, index. Cloth. $34.95. ISBN 0-8173-0903-9. [Reviewed for the Mark Twain Forum on October 14, 1999 by Kim Martin Long .]

Obenzinger, Hilton. American Palestine: Melville, Twain, and the Holy Land Mania. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. Pp. xxi + 309. Bibliographical notes and index. Paperback. $18.95. ISBN 0-691-00973-2. [Reviewed for the Mark Twain Forum on July 20, 2000 by Barbara Schmidt.]

Twain, Mark. Huck Finn; Pudd’nhead Wilson; No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger; and Other Writings. Ed. Guy Cardwell and Louis J. Budd. Library of America College Editions. 808 pp. Paperback. ISBN 1-883011-88-4. $12.95. Contains The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; Pudd’nhead Wilson; No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger; "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog"; "The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut"; "The Private History of a Campaign That Failed"; "Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offences"; "How To Tell a Story"; "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg"; "To the Person Sitting in Darkness"; "The United States of Lyncherdom"; "Corn-Pone Opinions"; "The War Prayer"; "The Turning Point of My Life."

Wieck, Carl F. Refiguring Huckleberry Finn. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2000. Cloth. $40.00. ISBN 0-8203-2238-5. Refiguring Huckleberry Finn looks at ways contemporary American culture and history influenced the formation of Mark Twain's masterwork. It also shows how the novel reflects Twain's deep investment in what Wieck calls "an open-minded, unbiased perception of the well-springs of the American spirit."

Clearly, Twain knew the Mississippi River and its people well. With Frederick Douglass, William Dean Howells, Ulysses S. Grant, and John Hay (Abraham Lincoln's personal secretary) among his friends, Twain also knew America. That understanding, Wieck shows us, is richly evident in Huckleberry Finn by the ways Twain explored themes of justice, rights, knowledge, and truth; engaged with the thoughts of Douglass, Lincoln, and Thomas Jefferson; and expressed concern over the public discourse on race and equality.

In addition, in discussions that range from number play in the novel to the symbolic potential of the Mississippi's awesome, one-way flow, Wieck looks closely at Twain's storytelling craft. [Text drawn from jacket.]

Articles

Budd, Louis J. "A Supplement to ‘A Chronology’ in Mark Twain Speaking." Essays in Arts and Sciences 29 (Oct. 2000): 57-68.

Csicsila, Joseph. "Mark Twain as He Is Taught: Critical Trends and American Literature Anthologies, 1919-1999." Essays in Arts and Sciences 29 (Oct. 2000): 69-92.

Pepper, Robert D. "Ned Buntline's Corner." Dime Novel Round-up (Aug. 2000): 134-36. Facsimile, transcription, and discussion of note, dated December 24, 1884, from E.Z.C. Judson ("Ned Buntline") to Mark Twain.

Audiotapes

Hirst, Robert H. Mark Twain in the West. Tape 3, History of Early California. The Bancroft Library. In 1861, Sam Clemens traveled by stagecoach from his home state of Missouri to the deserts of Nevada. At the time he was a licensed Mississippi pilot, temporarily out of work because of the Civil War. He surely did not think of himself as a writer, much less a humorist. Those professions simply could not compare, in his mind, with the rank and dignity of piloting. But it was to be in Nevada and later in California that he was transformed into a writer, reluctantly embracing his own extra-ordinary talent, what he referred to at the time as his "call to literature, of a low order" (i.e., humorous.)

In two lectures, "Those Were the Days!" and "Heaven on the Half-Shell," Robert Hirst tells the story of how Clemens came to the West, what he did there, and why he stayed longer than he planned, eventually adopting the name "Mark Twain" to sign his letters to the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise.

The files of that newspaper are largely lost, but Hirst reads from dozens of little-known text survivors, including "Petrified Man," which have been recovered from scrapbooks and other sources by the editors of the Mark Twain Project.

When Mark Twain moved to San Francisco in 1864 he wrote for several journals, but again most of what he wrote has been lost, despite the brilliance of what survives. From these survivors Hirst reads "Ministerial Change" and "Explanation of a Mysterious Sentence," among others. And he concludes with one of Mark Twain’s minor masterpieces, "Baker's Blue Jay Yarn," which illustrates the long-lasting effect of the West on Mark Twain’s best work. [Text from brochure accompanying the audiotape.]