“We are perched on a hill top that overlooks a little world of green valleys, shining rivers, sumptuous forests and billowy uplands veiled in the haze of distance. We have no neighbors. It is the quietest of all quiet places, and we are hermits that eschew caves and live in the sun.”
~ Mark Twain
ABOUT THE CENTER FOR MARK TWAIN STUDIES
Mark Twain wrote his most famous works in an octagonal study overlooking Elmira, NY, the hometown of his wife, Olivia. For more than two decades the Clemens family summered with Olivia’s siblings at Quarry Farm. All are buried at the nearby Woodlawn Cemetery. In 1983, both Quarry Farm and the study, since relocated to the Elmira College campus, became part of the Center for Mark Twain Studies. CMTS is dedicated to serving an international community of scholars interested in a approaching Mark Twain Studies from a variety of different approaches and disciplines.
RECENT ARTICLES
The Twain Doctrine: Citizen Holbrook & The Geopolitics of Colloquial Humor
Originally posted by: Matt Seybold on July 28, 2022In the above epigraph, Hal Holbrook alludes to the events which inspired Charles Neider’s Mark Twain & The Russians (1960). The “propaganda line” appeared first in “Mark Twain on the Bed of Procrustes,” ostensibly...
“The Texan Steer”: A Rediscovered Sketch by Mark Twain?
Originally posted by: Matt Seybold on February 12, 2019On August 27, 1870, a sketch appeared in the Leavenworth Daily Commercial with Mark Twain’s byline. So far as I can tell, this sketch, “The Texan Steer,” has never appeared in any collection of Twain’s work or...
The Park Church Culture Into Which Mark Twain Married: An Introduction to “Mark Twain’s Music Box”
Originally posted by: Matt Seybold on February 11, 2019EDITOR”S NOTE: The following was offered as an introduction to the performance of “Mark Twain’s Music Box” at the Park Church in Elmira on February 8th, 2019.117 years ago this week, in February of 1902, Mark...
2027 QUARRY FARM FELLOWSHIP GUIDELINES
VISITING THE MARK TWAIN STUDY
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Elmira 2026: The Tenth International Conference
on the State of Mark Twain Studies & Graduate Student Workshop
MARK TWAIN DAY BY DAY
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KEEP MARK TWAIN’S LEGACY ALIVE
Upcoming Events & Calls for Papers
Mark Twain Circle at 2026 ALA Conference
May 20-23, 2026 – Chicago, Illinois
Elmira 2026: The Tenth International Conference
on the State of Mark Twain Studies
July 30 – August 1 – Elmira, New York
The Second Quarry Farm Graduate Student Workshop: From Seminar Paper to Academic Article”
August 3 – August 7 – Elmira, New York
CFP: The Thirteenth Quarry Farm Symposium –
“Black Childhood and Children’s Literature in the Nineteenth Century”
October 16 and October 17 – Elmira, New York
Accepting applictions until roster is filled