New Issue of the Mark Twain Circular Now Available

Editor’s Note: James W. Leonard is a faculty member at The Citadel (Charleston, SC), the editor of the Mark Twain Circular, and webmaster for the Mark Twain Circle of America, the principal scholarly organization dedicated to the study of Samuel Clemens, his works, and his times. The membership includes most of the leading Mark Twain scholars in the world, as well as teachers, fans, and enthusiasts from many nations and many walks of life.

The June 2020 issue of the Mark Twain Circular is out! As some of you may have noticed, we’ve altered our publication schedule so that our first issue each year includes the minutes from our late-May business meeting. Of course, this year’s meeting was conducted over Zoom, which was surprisingly effective and led to some interesting discussion of how video conferencing will change meetings, round tables, and symposia moving forward. Along with the minutes, the current issue includes an introductory note from Susan K. Harris, the Mark Twain Circle’s new president. Our “Twain Talk” interviewee is outgoing president Larry Howe, and our “Recent Publications” section is full of exciting new scholarship.

While the most recent issue of the Circular is only available to Circle members (you can renew your membership or join here), all past issues are now hosted at the Mark Twain Circular Archive on our website. There, you can catch up on the recent publications listed in our Winter 2019 issue, or take a peek into the past by browsing the Circle’s very first (1987) issues. It’s always interesting to see how scholarship has evolved over the years, but the Archive also offers an opportunity to understand how we’ve grown as an organization. My thanks to everyone involved in producing and preserving these records—especially to Jerry Kerkmeyer, who digitized the early years for the original archive and to James S. Leonard, whose collection made compiling a comprehensive archive a relatively simple task.

We’ve got some new and exciting projects in the pipeline, and I’m happy to announce that our new website will be launching soon! We’ll be streamlining electronic renewals, re-organizing information, and even launching some new web-based series to promote and further Twain scholarship. I can only hope that we’ll live up to the example set by the Center for Mark Twain Studies’ digital content. This has been a long time coming, and we’re excited to see what the future holds.