Fall ‘Trouble Begins’ Lecture Series Finishes October 23
circa January 1849.
The public is invited to attend the fall 2024 The Trouble Begins Lecture Series, presented by the Center for Mark Twain Studies and supported by the generous donations of The Mark Twain Foundation. The final, free lecture will be at 7:00 p.m., Wednesday, Oct. 23 in the Barn at Quarry Farm with a presentation by Linda A. Morris, University of California, Davis.
Entitled “Before There Was Twain There Was Whitcher,” will take a look at Frances Miriam Whitcher who came to live in Elmira in 1847 as the wife of the newly appointed minister of Trinity Episcopal Church. At that time she was publishing her “Widow Bedott” satiric sketches under a pseudonym and continued to publish articles anonymously while living in Elmira. Although Whitcher lived in Elmira several decades before Samuel Clemens began his long affiliation with the town, he was familiar with her work and admired aspects of her humor, which may have influenced his own. Morris will pay particular attention to details of Whitcher’s writing during her Elmira period and the uproar it created when people began to recognize each other in her sketches, ultimately causing her husband to resign as the pastor of his church.
Linda A. Morris is Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Department of English, University of California, Davis. Her book-length studies include Women’s Humor in The Age of Gentility: The Life and Works of Frances Miriam Whitcher; American Women Humorists: Critical Essays); and Gender Play in Mark Twain: Cross-Dressing and Transgression. She has published a number of essays about Mark Twain and American women’s humor. She received “The Charlie Award” from the American Humor Studies Association and “The Olivia Langdon Clemens Award” from the Mark Twain Circle of America.
Click here for recordings of The Trouble Begins Lecture Series lectures.
About The Trouble Begins Lecture Series
In 1984, the Elmira College Center for Mark Twain Studies initiated a lecture series, The Trouble Begins at Eight lecture series. The title came from the handbill advertising Mark Twain’s October 2, 1866 lecture presented at Maguire’s Academy of Music in San Francisco. The first lectures were presented in 1985. By invitation, Mark Twain scholars present lectures in the fall and spring of each year, in the Barn at Quarry Farm or at Peterson Chapel in Cowles Hall on Elmira College’s campus. All lectures are free and open to the public.