Inaugural Issue of International Journal Features Essay By Award-Winning Twain Scholar

Hunan Normal University, a higher education institution serving over 30,000 students in Changsha, China, recently launched The Journal of Foreign Languages and Cultures, a peer-reviewed, open-access academic journal targeted at a broadly interdisciplinary and international audience. Each issue of the journal will be published in both English and Mandarin, and the editorial board includes scholars from nine countries on three continents. Among the fifteen articles in the opening issue, there are analyses of […]

Mark Twain Forum Reviews: The Life of Mark Twain: The Early Years by Gary Scharnhorst

The Life of Mark Twain: The Early Years, 1835-1871. By Gary Scharnhorst. University of Missouri Press, 2018. Pp. 686. Hardcover. ISBN 978-0-8262-2144-5. $36.95. The Life of Mark Twain: The Early Years, 1835-1871 is the first volume in a planned 3-volume edition from Gary Scharnhorst, university professor, editor, and noted Mark Twain scholar. It is a well-written and well-documented attempt to untangle the facts from the myths and legends that surround […]

An Unlikely Patron of Civil Rights Jurisprudence

Although I generally like Chris Rock as a comedian, one of his jokes has always rubbed me the wrong way. Rock told the joke back in 1999 as part of the Kennedy Center’s program honoring Richard Pryor as the first recipient of its first Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. According to the Chicago Tribune’s account: Chris Rock wondered what would have happened if Mark Twain had ever met Richard […]

A Mark Twain Studies Primer

My name is Mac Morrison, I am an undergraduate student at Tulane University. I’ve loved Mark Twain’s books since I was a very small child, and I’d like to gain a deeper understanding of the man and his work. In most academic fields there seem to be a short list of works by modern scholars that are considered canonical within the field,  and I was just wondering if you might […]

Hal Holbrook’s Timeless Gift: The Performance of a Lifetime

In literally thousands of extraordinary performances of his groundbreaking show, “Mark Twain Tonight!,” Hal Holbrook has brought Mark Twain alive for millions of people in the U.S. and around the world for over 60 years. To prepare for his first solo performance as Mark Twain, he researched reviews of Twain’s lecture tours and combed through little-known Twain texts in the Mark Twain Papers at Berkeley. The spectacularly innovative off-Broadway show that […]

Shelley Fisher Fiskin Receives 2017 John Tuckey Award

At the 8th International Conference on the State of Mark Twain Studies, the Center for Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College presented the John Tuckey Award to Shelley Fisher Fishkin. The Tuckey Award was established in 1991 and is given every four years “in recognition of lifetime achievements and contributions to Mark Twain Studies.” Dr. Fishkin is part of the faculty at Stanford University, where she is the Joseph S. […]

Mark Twain’s Personal Style Subject of Lecture by Martin Zehr

The Trouble Begins at Eight lecture series continues on Wednesday at Quarry Farm with a lecture by Martin Zehr entitled “Dressing for Success: Mark Twain Fashions an Image to Suit His Disguise. While famous for the attention-getting white linen suits he donned in his later years, Mark Twain was aware of the functional value of outer coverings throughout his life. A survey of Sam Clemens’s wardrobe choices underscores his sensitivity […]

Jon Clinch, Keynote Speaker at Mark Twain & Youth Symposium, Challenges Twain Scholars

Jon Clinch, pictured above with symposium co-organizer Kent Rasmussen, challenged the audience for his keynote address on Friday, October 7th to seek the unspoken questions in Mark Twain’s works. Clinch specifically described one such question, the one that inspired his acclaimed 2007 novel, Finn. That question, which he described as “so obvious it is easily forgotten,” is, “Who is Huckleberry Finn’s mother?” From this question, and from the mysterious circumstances in […]