The thirteen essays in this collection combine to offer a complex and deeply nuanced picture of Samuel Clemens. With the purpose of straying from the usual notions of Clemens (most notably the Clemens/Twain split that has ruled Twain scholarship for over thirty years), the editors have assembled contributions from a wide range of Twain scholars. As a whole, the collection argues that it is time we approach Clemens not as a shadow behind the literary persona but as a complex and intricate creator of stories, a creator who is deeply embedded in the political events of his time and who used a mix of literary, social, and personal experience to fuel the movements of his pen.

The essays illuminate Clemens's connections with people and events not usually given the spotlight and introduce us to Clemens as a man deeply embroiled in the process of making literary gold out of everyday experiences. From Clemens's wonderings on race and identity to his looking to family and domesticity as defining experiences, from musings on the language that Clemens used so effectively to consideration of the images and processes of composition, these essays challenge long-held notions of why Clemens was so successful and so influential a writer. While that search itself is not new, the varied approaches within this collection highlight markedly inventive ways of reading the life and work of Samuel Clemens.

About the Editors

Laura E. Skandera Trombley is Vice President for Academic Affairs at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. She is the author of numerous books, including Mark Twain in the Company of Women.

Michael J. Kiskis is Professor of American Literature at Elmira College in New York. He is the editor of Mark Twain's Own Autobiography: The Chapters from the "North American Review."

Contents

Mark Twain and the Tradition of Literary Domesticity, by Michael J. Kiskis

Samuel Clemens as Family Man, by Victor A. Doyno

"To his preferred friends he revealed his true character": Mary Mason Fairbanks' Disguised Debate with Sam Clemens, by J. D. Stahl

It Isn't the Writer that Does the Work: Mark Twain's Mechanical Marvels, by Jeffrey Steinbrink

Steamboats, Cocaine, and Paper Money: Mark Twain Rewriting Himself, by Robert Sattelmeyer

Mark Twain, Isabel Lyon, and the "Talking Cure": Negotiating Nostalgia and Nihilism in the Autobiography, by Jennifer L. Zaccara

The Minstrel and the Detective: The Functions of Ethnic Caricature in Mark Twain's Writings of the 1890s, by Henry B. Wonham

Huck, Jim, and the "Black & White" Fallacy, by James S. Leonard

Humor, Sentimentality, and Mark Twain's Black Characters, by David L. Smith

Black Genes and White Lies: Twain and the Romance of Race, by Ann M. Ryan

Mark Twain in Large and Small: The Infinite and the Infinitesimal in Twain's Late Writing, by Tom Quirk

Mark Twain Studies and the Myth of Metaphor, by John Bird