The 6th & 7th John S. Tuckey Awards For Lifetime Achievement in Mark Twain Studies

Susan K. Harris and Bruce Michelson have been fixtures of Twain Studies since the 1980s. Their publications have helped shape the field during that time, but their contributions go well beyond books and articles.

The Twain Doctrine: Citizen Holbrook & The Geopolitics of Colloquial Humor

Hal Holbrook was, briefly, an agent of the US government in the Cultural Cold War with the Soviet Union.

The Twain Doctrine

The midcentury resurgence of interest in Mark Twain’s life and work was fueled by the propaganda operations of both the U.S. and U.S.S.R.

Broken Idol: An Encomium For Hal Bush

Harold K. Bush, known to his friends as Hal, passed away earlier this week after a prolonged and finally unsuccessful recovery from a traumatic brain injury. Hal was a professor at St. Louis University and an acclaimed Twain scholar, probably best known for Mark Twain & The Spiritual Crisis of His Age (2007) and The Letters of Mark Twain & Joseph Hopkins Twichell (2017). His chapter on Twain in Continuing […]

The Fickle Affections of The Elmira Advertiser For Frederick Douglass

How did the editor of a paper that was habitually rude to Frederick Douglass end up with the manuscript of his Emancipation Day speech?