Black Lives Matter at Quarry Farm

In “A True Story,” written at Quarry Farm in 1874, Mark Twain frankly acknowledges his ignorance of black experience. Larry Howe discusses how Twain uses the story to check his own privilege and amplify the voice of a black woman, Mary Ann Cord.

Call For Papers: “Mark Twain & Gender” at MLA 2019, Sponsored by Mark Twain Circle of America

Although Mark Twain’s writing shows a partiality toward masculine experiences and perspectives, critical scholarship in the last 20 years or so has chipped away at the masculine critical bias. The Mark Twain Circle seeks proposals for papers that pursue these gender investigations further, re-interpreting representations of masculinity, femininity, or cross-dressing in the writings of Mark Twain or the influence of gendered social conventions on the life of Samuel Clemens. We […]

Join (or Renew) Your Membership in the Mark Twain Circle of America

One hundred and fifty years ago, a wise man said:    …nothing pleases a child so much as to be a member of something or other. Your rightly-constituted child don’t care shucks what it is, either. -Mark Twain, Letter to the San Francisco Alta California, May 20, 1867; published July 7, 1867. However, you don’t have to be a child to see the merits of membership in the Mark Twain Circle. […]