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.
Budd,
Louis J. (ed). Mark Twain: The Contemporary
Reviews. (American Critical Archives, 11.) New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Pp. xi + 656. Index. Cloth, 6-1/2"
x 9-1/2". $125.00. ISBN 0-521-39024-9.
Reviewed by Jason Gary Horn for the Mark Twain Forum on April 8, 2000.
Cooper,
Robert. Around the World with Mark
Twain. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2000. Pp. 432.
Bibliographical notes and index.
Hardcover, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4".
$27.95. ISBN 1-55970-522-1. Reviewed by Jim McWilliams for the Mark
Twain Forum on July 3, 2000.
de
Koster, Katie (ed.). Readings on Mark Twain. (Literary Companion to American Authors.) San
Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1996. 215 pp.. Bibliography, index. Paper, 5-1/4 x
8-1/2. $17.45. ISBN 1-56510-470-6. Cloth. ISBN 1-56510-471-4.
Emerson,
Everett. Mark Twain: A Literary Life. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000. ISBN 0-8122-3516-9. 392 pp. $34.95
cloth. Everett Emerson, author of The
Authentic Mark Twain, revisits one of America’s greatest and most popular
writers. Building upon that earlier
work, he explores the relationship between the life of the writer and his
writings. The assumption throughout is
that to see Mark Twain’s writings in focus, one must give proper attention to
their biographical context. In
reporting the author’s life, Emerson has endeavored to permit Mark Twain to
tell his own story as much as possible, through the use of letters and
autobiographical writings, some previously unpublished. These glimpses into the life of the writer
will be of interest to all who have an abiding affection for Samuel Clemens and
his extraordinary legacy. [Text from
dust jacket.]
Horn,
Jason Gary. Mark Twain: A Descriptive Guide to Biographical Sources. Lanham, Maryland:
Scarecrow Press, 1999. 114 pp. +
index. ISBN 0-8108-3630-0. Reviewed by Alan Gribben for the Mark Twain
Forum on December 14, 1999. The guide
encompasses all types of biographical material: general studies and indexes, standard and other notable
biographies, autobiography, letters, journals, critical studies, and the most
useful of those books and articles that significantly add to our knowledge of
Mark Twain. The most recent sources are
considered. [Text from Scarecrow Press
catalogue.]
Hutchinson,
Stuart, ed. Mark Twain: Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry
Finn. Columbia Critical Guides
Series. New York: Columbia University
Press, 1998. Moving from a discussion
of the two novels’ early receptions, this guide explores nineteenth- and
twentieth-century criticism by William Dean Howells, T. S. Eliot, Leslie
Fiedler, Ralph Ellison, Norman Mailer, and Toni Morrison. The final section provides students with
material on the contemporary debates about race and gender in these
novels. [Text from book jacket.]
Krauth,
Leland. Proper Mark Twain. Athens: University of Georgia Press,
1999. 258pp. Notes, bibliography.
Hardcover, 1.07 x 9.26 x 6.30.
$30.00. ISBN 0-8203-2106-0. [Reviewed by Janice McIntire-Strasburg for
the Mark Twain Forum on April 26, 2000.]
The Mark Twain we know has little use for propriety. An irreverent skeptic, he is traditionally
seen as a transgressive humorist out to undermine the conventional. But there is another Twain, argues Leland
Krauth, one who honors conventions, espouses commonplace notions, and upholds
the moralities of his time. This Twain
stays within the boundaries of his culture.
Proper Mark Twain redefines the persona of the humorist to
include this bounded Twain, who affirms the dominant values of Victorian
America. Largely overlooked or
sidestepped in critical commentaries, the proper Twain informs all of the
writer’s major works. He also appears
in the early western writings, the personal courtship letters, and the final
autobiographical dictations. The proper
Twain confirms and upholds humorously what the transgressive Twain seems to
subvert. Krauth finds manifestations of
the conventional in Twain’s cultural imperialism, literary domesticity,
sentimentality, commitment to progress, and even his humor. Further, he argues persuasively that the
bounded Twain speaks not only to appease his culture but to express deeply held
convictions. This study aims to
determine just how orthodox Twain was and to what extent he was a product of
the culture he seemed to oppose. To see
the proper Mark Twain, Krauth explains, is to understand how Twain saw himself
and what he meant to convey to his audience.
Throughout his career, Twain longed to be seen as more than a mere
humorist, claiming, as his, qualities dear to the Victorian heart: seriousness,
morality, and pathos. He contended that
gravity and tender feeling are “absolutely essential” in a humorist. Upholding the elite culture he seemed to
challenge, the proper Mark Twain even hoped to cultivate the masses. [Text from book jacket.]
Leckey,
Andrew. The Lack of Money Is the Root of All
Evil: Mark Twain’s Timeless Wisdom on Money, Wealth, and Investing. Paramus: Prentice Hall, 1999. 256 pp.
Cloth, 5 ½ x 8 ¼”. $22.00. ISBN 0-7352-0219-2. Mark Twain was born into poverty. Through eclectic business endeavors and
smart investing, he amassed great wealth by the age of 50. He went bankrupt at 60, and became wealthy
at 70. Using the words of Mark Twain,
Andrew Leckey--an accomplished financial journalist known to millions for
anchoring CNBC--imparts the lessons today’s investors can learn from Twain. Leckey has combed Twain’s novels, stories,
speeches, and letters for telling sayings about making, saving, guarding, and
growing money. Foreword by John C.
Bogle, founder and former chairman of The Vanguard Group. Preface by Louis J. Budd, Ph.D., Professor
Emeritus in English, Duke University.
[Text from advertising flyer.]
Leonard,
James S., ed. Making Mark Twain Work in the Classroom. Durham: Duke University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-8223-2297-8. 360 pp.
$17.95 paper. [Reviewed by David
Barber for the Mark Twain Forum on July 19, 1999.] How does one teach Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, a book
as controversial as it is central to the American literary canon? This collection of essays offers practical
classroom methods for instructors dealing with racism, casual violence, and the
role of women in the works of Mark Twain, as well as with their structural and
thematic discrepancies. The essays in Making
Mark Twain Work in the Classroom reaffirm the importance of Twain in the
American literature curriculum from high school through graduate study. Addressing slavery and race, gender, class,
religion, language and ebonics, Americanism, and textual issues of interest to
instructors and their students, the contributors offer guidance derived from
their own demographically diverse classroom experiences. Although some essays focus on such works as A
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and The Innocents Abroad,
most discuss the hotly debated Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, viewed
alternately in this volume as a comic masterpiece or as evidence of Twain’s
growing pessimism--but always as an effective teaching tool. Essays by James S. Leonard, Dennis W.
Eddings, S. D. Kapoor, Victoria Thorpe Miller, James E. Caron, Lawrence I.
Berkove, Louis J. Budd, Everett Carter, David E. E. Sloane, Pascal Covici, Jr.,
Jocelyn Chadwick, Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Anthony J. Berret, Beverly R. David,
Wesley Britton, David Tomlinson, Tom Reigstad, Victor Doyno, Joseph A. Alvarez,
Stan Poole, and Michael J. Kiskis.
[Text from dust jacket.]
McCullough,
Joseph B, and Janice McIntire-Strasburg, eds. Mark
Twain at the Buffalo Express: Articles and Sketches by America’s Favorite
Humorist. DeKalb: Northern Illinois
University Press, 1999. ISBN
0-87580-249-4. 357 pp. $30.00 cloth. Published together for the first time, the tales and articles
Twain contributed to the newspaper from 1869 to 1871 contain some of his finest
humor and social criticism. Anyone who
enjoys Mark Twain will appreciate these witty, insightful writings from a seldom-discussed
period in his life. [Text from
advertising flyer.]
Mensh,
Elaine, and Harry Mensh. Black, White, &
Huckleberry Finn: Re-imagining the American Dream. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press,
2000. Pp. 167. Bibliography, index. Cloth, 6 1/4 x 9 1/4. ISBN 0-8173-0995-0. [Reviewed by Joseph Coulombe for the Mark
Twain Forum on March 24, 2000.] The
Mensches consider Huck Finn in the light of historical records left by
slaves and slaveholders in order to determine where the book undermines or
upholds traditional racial attitudes.
Reviewing key episodes, the authors explore such issues as whether Jim
is a stereotype or if he adopts a survival strategy devised by real slaves and
feigns the traits whites attribute to him, whether Huck overcomes his racist
attitudes, whether Twain overcame his own early attitudes on race, and whether
or to what degree such attitudes affected his work. The authors examine whether Huck Finn’s ending is an
allegorical condemnation of the racial travesties of the era in which Twain
wrote it, as many critics hold, or if it is itself a racial travesty. They consider the novel’s use of the most
racially charged epithet from both a historical standpoint and that of the
controversy, the censorship issue.
[Text from dust jacket.]
Powers,
Ron. Dangerous Waters: A Biography of the Man
Who Became Mark Twain. HarperCollins, 1999. 220 pp. The first full
study of the life of Samuel Clemens and his boyhood in Hannibal, Missouri. This book covers his early experiences with
a Mississippi steamer, the sense of guilt and fear of damnation he picked up at
church, the superstitions he learned from blacks on his farm [sic], and how he
came to be shaped by the landscape, culture, and people of the town. [Text from Scholar’s Bookshelf
listing.]
Twain,
Mark. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Ed. Susan K. Harris. New Riverside Editions. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. 392 pp.
Paper. ISBN 0-395-98078-x. Complete text with introduction and
chronology. Essays on historical
contexts by Victor A. Doyno; George E. Bates, Jr., et al.; Lorenzo J. Greene,
Gary R. Kremer, and Antonio F. Holland; Rev. William Henry Milburn; Lawrence W.
Levine; Steven Mailloux; Shelley Fisher Fishkin; Victor Fischer. Critical essays by Henry Nash Smith; Alan
Trachtenberg; David L. Smith; Norman Mailer; Toni Morrison.
Twain,
Mark. Plymouth Rock and the
Pilgrims and Other Speeches. Charles Neider, ed. New York: Cooper Square Press, 2000. 368 pp.
Paper, 6 x 9. $17.95. 0-8154-1104-9. Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain (1835-1910), was in great demand
as a public speaker, an international star of the lecture circuit whose
appearances commanded large fees (which he needed to pay off his considerable
debts). According to many witnesses, he
was one of the great comic speakers of the nineteenth century, whose genius
could keep an audience enthralled or helpless with laughter. Nearly all of his speeches were carefully
crafted and then delivered as if they were impromptu; consequently, they are works
of literature in every sense, and some are among the finest examples of his
writing. This collection, spanning the
years from 1866 to 1909, brings together the best of Twain’s “spoken”
work. In addition to the title piece--a
biting and hilarious meditation on American mythmaking--the diverse array of
topics include: the Hawaiian Islands, women, sins of the press, masturbation,
the art of war, plagiarism, Ulysses S. Grant, New York morals, stage fright,
the Fourth of July, and much more.
[Text from book cover.]
Messent,
Peter. “Comic Intentions in Mark
Twain’s ‘A Double-Barreled Detective Story.”
28 (Oct. 1999): 35–51.
Quirk,
Tom. “Authors,
Intentions, and Texts.” Essays in
Arts and Sciences. 28 (Oct. 1999):
1–15. Includes discussion of Colonel
Sellers.
Roberts,
Taylor. “The Recovery of Mark Twain’s Copy of Morte
DArthur.” Resources for American
Literary Study. 23.2 (1997):
166-80. “Mark Twain’s own copy of
Malory’s book--containing fifty pages of his underlining and marginalia--has
abruptly and astonishingly reappeared. . . . This article discusses the
whereabouts of Mark Twain’s copy of Morte Darthur since he acquired it
in 1884, some noteworthy features of its marginalia, and the impact that this
discovery has on the authoritative edition of Connecticut Yankee that was
published by the Mark Twain project in 1979.”
[Text from the article.]
Holbrook,
Hal. Mark Twain Tonight!. West Long Branch, NJ: Kultur, 1999. Originally aired by CBS on March 6, 1967. Directed by Paul Bogart, produced by David
Susskind, material adapted by Hal Holbrook through the courtesy of the estate
of Samuel L. Clemens. Time: 1 hour, 30
minutes, 1 videocassette. $24.95. ASIN B00000IPGJ. Reviewed by Mark Dawidziak for the Mark Twain Forum on June 11,
2000.
WGBH
Educational Foundation, Educational Print and Outreach Department. Huck Finn Coursepack. 2000. Includes video
documentary: Born to Trouble: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 90
minutes; Huck Finn in Context: A
Teaching Guide, 40 pp., 8-1/2" x 11", and companion readings approved
for classroom use, 259 pp., 8-1/2" x 11". $8.75 plus $4.75 shipping and handling (total: $13.50).
Reviewed by David Barber for the Mark Twain Forum on June 13, 2000.
Twain,
Mark. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Auburn, CA: Audio Partners Publishing Corp., 1999. Read by Patrick Fraley. Prod. by Ronald A. Feinberg and Patrick
Fraley. Dir. by Ronald A. Feinberg. Music by Ken Deifik. Time: 11 hrs., 20 mins. Unabridged.
7 cassettes. ISBN 1-57270-111-0.
$29.95. Reviewed by Kim Martin Long for
the Mark Twain Forum on April 11, 2000.