Author: Center for Mark Twain Studies

Sam and Olivia Clemens’ idyllic early years of marital happiness were shattered with the loss of their first child, Langdon, to diphtheria. Only one hundred years ago, even in the world’s wealthiest nations, children died in great numbers—of diarrhea, diphtheria and measles, of scarlet fever and meningitis. Culture was shaped by these deaths; diaries and letters recorded them, poets and writers wrote about and lamented them.The near-conquest of infant and […]