John T. Lewis & Mark Twain: A Friendship
“This wearer aggrandizes the watch, not the watch the wearer”
Tag: William Dean Howells
The John T. Lewis Story: A Repeat Epistolary Performance
Two scholars from the Mark Twain Project analyze Twain’s storytelling technique by comparing two letters recounting the same famous incident at Quarry Farm.
Amy Kaplan & The McDonaldization of Mark Twain
Amy Kaplan’s scholarship presents important challenges for Twain Studies.
Life, In Purgatory (A Twainiac Quarantine Diary)
Our resident scholar discusses the resonance of Mark Twain’s “Was it Heaven? Or Hell?” during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Mark Twain & Libation”: A Talk By The 2017 Louis J. Budd Award Winner
On Saturday, August 5th, the Mark Twain Circle presented the Louis J. Budd Award to Laura Skandera Trombley at the 8th International Conference on the State of Mark Twain Studies, hosted by the Center for Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College. Dr. Trombley is a Professor of English at University of Southern California, as well as former President of Pitzer College and the Huntington Library. She is also author of […]
Lecture on Artemus Ward Concludes the 2017 Park Church Lecture Series
The 2017 Park Church Summer Lecture Series, presented by the Center for Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College, continues Wednesday, June 21 at 7:00 p.m., with its final lecture of the season, “Artemus Ward: The Man Who Made Lincoln Laugh” presented by John Pascal, teacher at Seton Hall Prep School. It is generally accepted that during his lifetime, Mark Twain was considered the preeminent American master storyteller and lecturer of humor. […]
Mark Twain Wishes “A Happy New Year” With 1876 Postcard
The above image, courtesy of The Mark Twain Project at UC-Berkeley’s Bancroft Library, comes from an engraved greeting card Twain circulated in January, 1876. William Dean Howells, upon receiving one, described the frog as “luridly hopping along, and looking as if he had just got out of a pond of hellfire.” The card was designed by True Williams, who offered it gratis to Twain and his publisher as thanks for the sustained […]
Mark Twain, Gore Vidal, & The Nadirs of U.S. Electoral History
“History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” – The Apocryphal Twain In November 1973, Gore Vidal’s Burr debuted at #4 on the NYT Best Seller List. The novel spent the next 39 weeks in the top ten, including 21 […]