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Center for Mark Twain Studies

Honoring Mark Twain

Online Resources

Cmts resources, mark twain studies resource pages.

CMTS is committed to giving accurate, accessible information related to Mark Twain, his literature, his circle, and his world. These resource pages have been written by Mark Twain scholars, often times experts in the particular field. These are meant to be reliable, efficient resources for teachers, students, enthusiasts, and the general public.

• Beecher, Thomas K.
• Clemens, Olivia Langdon
• Eastman, Annis Ford
• Jones, John W.
• King, Grace
• Twichell, Joseph
• Buffalo (Mark Twain’s Time in Buffalo)
• Elmira College
• Hartford House (Overview)
• Hartford House (Beginnings)
• Hawai’i (Mark Twain’s Time in Hawai’i)
• Quarry Farm
• Innocents Abroad, The (1869)

Miscellenia

• Courtship of Samuel Clemens and Olivia Langdon
• J.Langdon Coal Company

Mark Twain Day by Day Online

Mark Twain Day by Day  was originally a print reference, meticulously created by David Fears, who has generously made this work available, via the Center for Mark Twain Studies, as a digital edition. This invaluable resource for Twain scholars has never before been available outside research libraries and rare private collections. It is a unique tool for scholars, students, teachers, and other Twain enthusiasts. Please recognize that this is a preliminary, BETA version of a resource which we will continue to develop in the coming years. 

Twain’s Elmira

A collection of online resources dedicated to Mark Twain’s legacy in Elmira, collected and curated by the Center for Mark Twain Studies. Includes the following sections:

• The Gospel of Revolt in Elmira
• The Courtship of Sam and Livy
• A Virtual Tour of Mark Twain’s Elmira
• Emancipation Day, 1880 – Frederick Douglass in Elmira

Mark Twain: Television Star

David Bianculli, nationally-known television critic and contributor to NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross , has assembled a collection of all the known times the character “Mark Twain” has occurred on television exclusively for the Center for Mark Twain Studies. CMTS hopes that this collection helps contribute to the academic discussion of Mark Twain’s portrayal in the television era and beyond.

Virtual Tour of Quarry Farm

This virtual tour shows the entirety of Quarry Farm, the Quarry Farm grounds, the Mark Twain Study, the Langdon/Clemens plot in Woodlawn Cemetery and many other locations associated with CMTS.  One of the major highlights is the Quarry Farm parlor, Mary Ann Cord’s stove in the Kitchen, and the Porch where Mark Twain set “A True Story, Word For Word As I Heard It.”

Quarry Farm Historic Interiors and Furnishings

Walter Ritchie, Jr., decorative arts scholar and architectural historian specializing in nineteenth-century American domestic architecture, interiors, and furniture, discusses the interiors and furnishings in the main house at Quarry Farm. Scholars from all corners of the United States and the globe have the opportunity to spend their time amongst this important collection.

Quarry Farm Architectural History

The most extensive document focusing on the architectural history of Quarry Farm. Written by Johnson-Schmidt & Associates, Architects, this report examines the developmental history of Quarry Farm, including historical background and context, chronology of development and use, physical description, character defining features, and an evaluation of its significance.

Quarry Farm Landscape History

The most extensive document focusing on the landscape history of Quarry Farm. Written by Martha Lyon Landscape Architects, LLC, this report includes a report on the Quarry Farm landscape in history, a historical chronology, photographs of existing conditions, and a bibliography for further reading and research.

Interactive Map of Elmira 1901

This interactive map introduces a series of landmarks and community members affiliated with Twain and his extended family.

Interactive Map of Woodlawn Cemetery

Mark Twain and most of his extended family are buried in the Langdon-Clemens plot at Woodlawn Cemetery. The Center for Mark Twain Studies has created a geo-located map of Woodlawn which also features short bios of many of the prominent Elmirans buried there.

James B. Pond 1895 Collection

Major James B. Pond recorded the North American section of Mark Twain’s famous 1895-1896 with photographs and text. The journey resulted in Twain’s fifth and final travel book Following the Equator (1897). Collection includes Pond’s pictures and textual description of Twain’s tour, as well as intimate pictures of Quarry Farm in September 1895.

Catalog of Quarry Farm Furniture

A catalog of the 19th century furnishings at Quarry Farm, compiled by Walter J. Ritchie, Jr., Quarry Farm Fellow, in 2017. The catalog includes furniture that once existed in the Langdon Mansion and items specifically purchased for Quarry Farm by Susan Crane. This is an ever-growing list. The catalog will be used for preservation efforts for this Quarry Farm collection.

Mark Twain in Elmira (2013)

In an expanded collection of primary and secondary documents and photos,  Mark Twain in Elmira recounts the story of Sam Clemens’ time in Elmira and underscores the importance of Elmira in the development of American literature.   Mark Twain in Elmira (1977) was first compiled by Robert D. Jerome, an Elmira businessman and Mark Twain researcher and collector, and Dr. Herbert A. Wisbey, Jr., and Elmira College Professor of History.  As information about Mark Twain’s life in Elmira grew, Jerome and Wisbey created a list of pieces they proposed for inclusion in a second edition.  This expanded second edition contains those suggestions as well as additional new content and photographs of interest to mark Twain scholars and enthusiasts.  Dr. Barbara Snedecor is the editor of the second edition.

Important Online Resources

Mark twain project online.

University of California, Berkeley – This site applies innovative technology to more than four decades’ worth of archival research by expert editors at the Mark Twain Project. It offers unfettered, intuitive access to reliable texts, accurate and exhaustive notes, and the most recently discovered letters and documents. The site’s ultimate purpose is to produce a digital critical edition, fully annotated, of everything Mark Twain wrote. MTPO offers not only the edited texts of more than 2000 letters and several book-length writings, including  Autobiography of Mark Twain , but a catalog of all Clemens-related correspondence known to the Project staff and a variety of digital research resources.

Mark Twain’s Works in Project Gutenberg

Contains hundreds of downloadable versions of Twain’s works.  Some contain original illustrations from the first editions of the texts.

Mark Twain Forum Book Reviews

The Mark Twain Forum has long been a leading venue for reviews of new publications in Mark Twain Studies. The site has an extensive archive of reviews.

C omprehensive Publication List of Known Interviews of Mark Twain

From Barbara Schmidt’s www.Twainquotes.com. This comprehensive publication list of Mark Twain interviews was first compiled using Louis Budd’s check lists of interviews that were published in  American Literary Realism in the Winter 1977 issue and a later supplementary list published in the Spring 1996 issue. Budd published a small selection of Twain’s interviews in these two journals. Since 1996, researchers have found additional interviews utilizing the new technology of text-searchable historical newspaper databases. These have been added to the lists first compiled by Budd. It is expected that many more interviews are yet to be found. In the fall of 2006 Mark Twain: The Complete Interviews , edited by Gary Scharnhorst (University of Alabama Press) was released. It does not contain every version of every interview, disputed interviews — those Twain denied making, fake interviews or foreign interviews. Nor does it include all photographs and illustrations that were often published alongside the interview. It is, however, the best reference source available to date and highly recommended. This online resource combines all sources of known interviews (including spurious, disputed, and foreign) and indicates where they have been published.

Newspaper Articles Written by Mark Twain

From Barbara Schmidt’s www.Twainquotes.com. A large collection of full text newspaper articles written by Mark Twain, ranging from 1853 to 1892. Collection includes a large number from Twain’s time in San Francisco.

Chronology of Known Mark Twain Speeches, Public Readings, and Lectures

From Barbara Schmidt’s www.Twainquotes.com. An extensive chronology of Mark Twain’s public speaking engagements, some with full text. Documenting all of Mark Twain’s known public speeches, readings and lectures is a monumental undertaking first attempted by Paul Fatout in his classic volume  Mark Twain Speaking  published by University of Iowa Press, 1976. Fatout’s listing has been updated at least once by noted Twain scholar Louis Budd in”A Supplement to ‘A Chronology’ in  Mark Twain Speaking ” published in  Essays in Arts and Sciences , Vol. XXIX, October 2000, pp. 57-68. As more and more of Mark Twain’s letters are published and more and more historical newspaper databases become searchable in digital format, it becomes increasingly apparent that no list of Twain’s known speeches will likely be complete. While texts of some of Twain’s major speeches do survive, many have never been recovered. 

Mark Twain in His Times

This interpretive archive focuses on how “Mark Twain” and his works were created and defined, marketed and performed, reviewed and appreciated. The goal is to allow readers, scholars, students and teachers to see what Mark Twain and His Times said about each other, in a way that can speak to us today. Contained here are dozens of texts and manuscripts, scores of contemporary reviews and articles, hundreds of images, and many different kinds of interactive exhibits.  The site is written and directed by Professor Stephen Railton and is produced by the University of Virginia Library.

Mark Twain’s Geography

This site is devoted to presenting the geography of the many places he visited and/or spoke about. The site is designed as a series of courses.  Several of the courses follow his books, such as Roughing It and Innocents Abroad .  The books have been divided into geographically significant sections. The site was created and is maintained by B. Scott Holmes.

Letters from The Innocents Abroad

This is a set of links to pdf clips of the letters associated with the Holy Land Excursion.  This pattern mostly follows Daniel Morley McKeithan, Traveling with The Innocents Abroad: Mark Twain’s Original Reports from Europe and the Holy Land (University of Oklahoma Press, 1958). This site is maintained by B. Scott Holmes.

Mark Twain’s Works in LibriVox

This organization claims to bring about the “acoustical liberation of books in the public domain.” LibriVox, founded in 2005, is a community of volunteers from all over the world who record public domain texts: poetry, short stories, whole books, even dramatic works, in many different languages.  The site is particularly useful to the sight impaired.  John Greenman has narrated a number of Twain’s works in this collection.  See also John Greenman’s collection on  Internet Archive .

The Major Mark Twain Centers

The four major Mark Twain Centers include the Center for Mark Twain Studies in Elmira, New York; The Mark Twain Papers at the University of California, Berkeley; the Mark Twain House & Museum in Hartford, Connecticut; and the Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum in Hannibal, Missouri.

The Mark Twain Papers

University of California Berkeley – The Mark Twain Papers contain the voluminous private papers of Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain). Before his death in 1910, Clemens passed these documents to his official biographer, Albert Bigelow Paine, who published sparingly from them until his death in 1937. Several successive editors served as literary executors for Clemens’s estate and custodians of the Papers, which became part of The Bancroft Library in 1971. Their website includes information about the archive’s history and current holdings, encourages viewers to learn more about their research resources, and allows Twain scholars to schedule a visit to the archives.

The Mark Twain House and Museum

The Mark Twain House & Museum has restored the author’s Hartford, Connecticut, home, where the author and his family lived from 1874 to 1891. In addition to providing tours of Twain’s restored home, a National Historic Landmark, the institution offers activities and educational programs that illuminate Twain’s literary legacy and provide information about his life and times. The website includes a virtual tour of the Hartford House and resources for teachers and students.

The Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum

Located in Hannibal, Missouri, The Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum holds a number of Mark Twain’s personal artifacts, an extensive collection of printed materials, five historic buildings, including the house where the Clemens family lived from 1844 to 1853, two museums, and three museum shops. The site also contains resources for teachers and students.

Academic Organizations and Academic Journals

Mark twain circle of america.

The Mark Twain Circle of America is 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 Mark Twain Circle is an active presence in the American Literature Association, Modern Language Association of America, and South Atlantic Modern Language Association. The Circle sponsors scholarly meetings at American Literature Association and Modern Language Association of America national conventions.  It has two publications: the  Mark Twain Annual   and the  Mark Twain Circular .

The Mark Twain Annual

The Mark Twain Annual  publishes articles related to Mark Twain and those who surrounded him and serves as an outlet for new scholarship as well as new pedagogical approaches. It is the official publication of the  Mark Twain Circle of America , an international association of people interested in the life and work of Mark Twain.

The Mark Twain Journal

The  Mark Twain Journal   is a twice-yearly periodical devoted to the life and works of the American author Mark Twain, drawing where possible on contemporary sources. The  Journal  also explores his family and social relationships as well as his literary and intellectual connections.  Founded in 1936 by Cyril Clemens (editor, 1936-1982), the eclectic  Mark Twain Journal  is one of the oldest American journals devoted to a single author.

The American Humor Studies Association

Founded in 1975, the American Humor Studies Association promotes scholarship on all aspects and periods of American Humor through conferences, publications, awards and the general support of a community of dedicated scholars of American humor.  The AHSA has sponsored joint conferences with the Mark Twain Circle in America .  AHSA prints two publications:  Studies in American Humor , a scholarly journal, and  To Wit , a bi-annual newsletter.

Studies in American Humor

Founded by the American Humor Studies Association in 1974 and published continuously since 1982,  Studies in American Humor is a scholarly publication that specializes in humanistic research on humor in America (loosely defined) because the universal human capacity for humor is always expressed within the specific contexts of time, place, and audience that research methods in the humanities strive to address. Such methods now extend well beyond the literary and film analyses that once formed the core of American humor scholarship to a wide range of critical, biographical, historical, theoretical, archival, ethnographic, and perhaps digital studies of humor in performance and public life as well as in print and other media.

The Japan Mark Twain Society

According to its Constitution, The purpose of the the Japan Mark Twain Studies is to study the literature of Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) and the surrounding area, to establish a broader and deeper understanding, and at the same time to establish mutual relationships among members. The Society publishes the academic journal Mark Twain Studies every three years. The organization also facilitates The International Forum of the Japan Mark Twain Society.

Important Sites Dedicated to Mark Twain, His Literature, and His Time

Chemung county historical society.

Founded in 1923, the Chemung County Historical Society is a non-profit educational institution dedicated to the collection, preservation, and presentation of the history of the Chemung Valley region, the area in which Elmira is located.  The museum has the permanent exhibit “Mark Twain’s Elmira” that focuses on the people and places that the author knew during his time here.  The exhibit features artifacts used by Mark Twain and his family and historic images of Elmira during the late 1800s.  It also contains a number of research resources and photographs concerning to Mark Twain, the Langdons, and the author’s legacy in Elmira.

John W. Jones Museum

John W. Jones’ house in Elmira, New York, as an interactive museum commemorating the life and work of the former slave, who as an Underground Railroad Station Master, safely assisted nearly 800 slaves’ flight to Canada and was responsible for the dignified burial of nearly 3000 Confederate soldiers. Jones worked with Jervis Langdon (1809-1870) in their efforts with the Underground Railroad.

TwainQuotes.com

A large collection of quotations and prinary sources attributed to Mark Twain, organized by topic.  The site also includes special reports and scholarly articles.  The site was created and is managed by Barbara Schmidt.

The Mark Twain Forum

The largest and most popular listserv dedicated to Mark Twain.  The site also contains an extensive collection of scholarly  book reviews .

“Mark Twain: A Skeptic’s Progress” Exhibit

This online exhibition from The Morgan Library & Museum and  the New York Public Library  presents a major exhibition at the Morgan exploring a central, recurring theme throughout the author’s body of work: his uneasy, often critical, attitude towards a rapidly modernizing America. The exhibition coincides with the 175th anniversary of Twain’s birth in 1835 and is composed of more than 120 manuscripts and rare books, including original manuscript pages from  Adventures of Huckleberry Finn  (1885) and  Life on the Mississippi  (1883) as well as letters, notebooks, diaries, photographs, and drawings associated with the author’s life and work.

Buffalo Public Library Mark Twain Reading Room

The site focuses on Twain’s short time in Buffalo.  The permanent exhibit contains leaves from the original handwritten manuscript of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn .  In the early 1930s, the Buffalo Public Library began to build a unique collection of special English and foreign language editions of the novel. Through the years, this collection has continued to grow. These remarkable items, currently numbering more than five hundred, fill the bookcases lining the walls.  The site contains pictures of present and past exhibits focusing on Twain.

Jim’s Journey: The Huck Finn Freedom Center

The mission of this Center is to build cross-cultural understanding by documenting, preserving and presenting the history of the 19th and 20th-century African American community in Hannibal and northeast Missouri.  It commemorates the once thriving African American community and the people who built it.  It also examines the pain and suffering of slavery, segregation, and racial oppression. “Jim’s Journey: The Huck Finn Freedom Center” honors Daniel Quarles, the prototype for Jim in  Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and  acknowledges Samuel Clemens the humanitarian, and the African Americans he impacted and those who influenced his life and work.

“The Business of Being Mark Twain” Exhibit

Cornell University Library commemorated the 100th anniversary of the death of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, the author known to the world as Mark Twain, with an exhibition featuring the Mark Twain collection of Susan Jaffe Tane. The online exhibit contains books, manuscripts, letters, photographs, and other materials that celebrate the life and work of this American icon.

Mark Twain’s Mississippi

From the Northern Illinois University Libraries, the site provides searchable texts of works in which Mark Twain imagined and remembered the Mississippi Valley of the mid-nineteenth century, as well as a set of primary source materials providing other descriptions of it or places within it. It also includes original interpretive materials, maps, and lesson plans for teachers.

Mark Twain’s Redding, Connecticut Home: Stormfield

Brent Colley, a local historian, has compiled a wealth of information on Twain’s last days in his Redding home, Stormfield.

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Mark Twain, the Talking Cure, and Literary Form

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Max Cavitch, Mark Twain, the Talking Cure, and Literary Form, American Literary History , Volume 35, Issue 3, Fall 2023, Pages 1183–1205, https://doi.org/10.1093/alh/ajad096

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[The] significance [of Mark Twain’s Autobiography ] for the story of mental health in America has as much to do with its form as with its content—an innovative autobiographical form that Twain crafted not only out of personal upheavals but also with acute insight into the depth psychology of his time.

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UC Berkeley Library Update

Mark Twain Papers

New old release: roughing it, autobiography of mark twain, volume 3.

October sees the publication of the third and final volume of Autobiography of Mark Twain , chronicling the author’s inner and outer life through a series of daily dictations that go wherever his fancy leads.

Created from March 1907 to December 1909, these dictations present Mark Twain at the end of his life: receiving an honorary degree from Oxford University; railing against Theodore Roosevelt; founding numerous clubs; incredulous at an exhibition of the Holy Grail; credulous about the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays; relaxing in Bermuda; observing (and investing in) new technologies. The Autobiography’ s “Closing Words” movingly commemorate his daughter Jean, who died on Christmas Eve 1909. Also included in this volume is the previously unpublished “Ashcroft-Lyon Manuscript,” Mark Twain’s caustic indictment of his “putrescent pair” of secretaries and the havoc that erupted in his house during their residency.

Only partially published up to now, the whole Autobiography of Mark Twain has been critically reconstructed and fully annotated by the editors of the Mark Twain Project. At last it is made available as it was intended to be read. The text of all three volumes, with annotations and full critical apparatus, is available at Mark Twain Project Online .

Spotlight on NEH@50

We’re honored to be among the fifty projects featured in NEH@50, a celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the National Endowment for the Humanities .

MTP is in excellent company: see for yourself .

Frequently Asked Question: Mark Twain’s signature

We often hear from Mark Twain fans who are understandably excited to have found an early edition with a signature and inscription that look genuine. Alas, for many the excitement is short lived, because when it comes to Twain’s collected works, a signature is not always what it seems.

The confusion arises because there are several multi-volume sets of Twain’s works which contain a steel-engraved facsimile of a handwritten statement and signature. The statement reads, “This is the authorized Uniform Edition of all my books. Mark Twain.” It appears in popular series such as the American Publishing Company’s Riverdale and Underwood editions, and Harper & Brother Publishers’ Hillcrest and Author’s National Editions.

The Charles L. Webster & Company’s Mark Twain’s Library of Humor also has a stamped facsimile of Clemens’s handwritten “Compiler’s Apology” that reads: “Those selections in this book which are from my own works were made by my two assistant compilers, not by me. This is why there are not more. Mark Twain.” According to our correspondents, this statement also appears in a six-volume series titled Masterpieces of Humor and may be reprinted elsewhere.

Of course, there are many books individually autographed and inscribed by Clemens, but if you see either wording indicated above, your book is most likely from a facsimile-signature set.

There are also sets of Mark Twain’s writings that contain real signatures. These were not inscribed to specific friends and acquaintances, but were signed by Clemens to enhance sets of collected works such as the American Publishing Company’s Royal and Autograph Editions. These are numbered, registered presentation sets, and Clemens signed a page in the first volume of each set. Knowing the date of Clemens’s death will eliminate some signature ambiguity, but not all. The Writings of Mark Twain , Definitive Edition, was published by Gabriel Wells in 1922, but the first volumes of these sets contain inserted leaves signed by Clemens in 1906.

We cannot evaluate or estimate the value of our correspondents’ books, but if you are curious about the qualities and value of your books, we recommend that you contact a qualified antiquarian bookseller, preferably a member of the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America, Inc. You can contact them to find a member bookseller in your area.

Mark Twain Resources

Googling mark twain will bring up more than 12,300,000 hits..

You’ll need to make distinctions between inaccurate or copycat sites and the real thing. These are some of the best on the web.

Mark Twain Papers & Project The Mark Twain Papers & Project at the University of California, Berkeley is where Twain’s vast published and unpublished materials are archived. The project has published scholarly editions of many of his works and offers extraordinary access to materials, including a searchable database of all known letters to and from Samuel L. Clemens.

Center for Mark Twain Studies The Center for Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College in upstate New York maintains a strong archive, as well as a study center for scholars in the former home of Clemens’ sister-in-law, which was a summer retreat for the Clemens family and a workplace for the writer.

TwainQuotes.com Barbara Schmidt’s twainquotes.com site is a wealth of information (not only quotes), but also hundreds of primary materials on Mark Twain, such as interviews and articles from the press of the era.

Mark Twain Forum The Mark Twain Forum is a place where scholars and non-scholars swap information, quash myths and trade (sometimes strongly worded) opinions on the great American writer.

Mark Twain in His Times Noted Mark Twain scholar Stephen Railton “produces and directs” this delightful, cleverly designed site from the University of Virginia. There are dozens of texts and manuscripts, scores of contemporary reviews and articles, hundreds of images and interactive exhibits.

Mark Twain: A Film Directed by Ken Burns Mark Twain: A Film Directed by Ken Burns is a PBS site associated with the much-viewed documentary. It includes a chronology of Twain’s life, selected writings, classroom activities for teachers, and other source material, all wrapped up neatly in an elegant design.

Viewing Mark Twain Books …And of course, there are Mark Twain’s books themselves, viewable and downloadable on Project Gutenberg.

Other Places Associated with Mark Twain

The Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum in Hannibal, MO The mission of the Mark Twain Home Foundation is to promote awareness and appreciation of the life and works of Mark Twain and to demonstrate the relevance of his stories and ideas to citizens of the world.

Mark Twain Birthplace in Florida, MO Our fellow Mark Twain house museums in Missouri are great places to visit, offering a perspective on the writer’s formative years and the world portrayed in his most famous books.

Mark Twain Public Library And don’t forget the library in Redding, Connecticut founded by Mark Twain, which still has many of the books he donated (many still with his comments in the margins!) Librarian Heather Morgan works hard to preserve Twain’s heritage at www.marktwainlibrary.org.

Twain’s Last Days Brent Colley, a local historian, has compiled a wealth of information on Twain’s last days in his Redding home, Stormfield.

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Autobiography of Mark Twain

Samuel Clemens as a teenage printer in Hannibal, Missouri, 1850.  

Mark Twain, 1906

Mark Twain demanded that his autobiography not be published in its entirety until 100 years after his death because he feared that much of it was too incendiary.

Now, exactly a century later, the first authoritative volume has arrived, after decades of painstaking scholarship involving tens of thousands of documents -- and after decades of NEH support. Readers can finally see the unexpurgated version of Twain’s views on Christianity, government, human nature and scores of his contemporaries from Ulysses S. Grant and Horace Greeley to Booker T. Washington and the Rockefellers.

At over 700 copiously annotated pages and a list price of $34.95, the Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1 became a runaway best-seller when it was published in November of 2010.

But thanks to funding by NEH and other contributors, anyone can read it for free at the Web site of the Mark Twain Papers & Project, housed at the University of California at Berkeley’s Bancroft Library.

Readers expecting a conventional linear chronology will be surprised. Twain struggled for 30 years against the constraints of a cradle-to-grave narrative. By 1906, when he began dictating large portions of the Autobiography, “he had finally liberated himself from that,” says Robert Hirst, General Editor of the Mark Twain Papers. “It took him a long time to get to the final form. And the final form is this: I’m going to talk about whatever I want to talk about, I’m going to change the subject whenever I lose the least bit of interest, and go to some other topic.”

However, the original documents – a welter of fragments, false starts, revisions and variations – are “to a degree puzzling and confusing,” Hirst explains. That is why it took decades before it became clear exactly what Twain had in mind. “In fact, we thought until three years ago that this whole manuscript was a kind of incomplete set of drafts. But that’s wrong.The editors who worked with me out in Berkeley are the ones who figured out that Twain had actually finished it. He knew exactly how he wanted to begin it, exactly what he wanted in it, and exactly what he didn’t want in it.

“From our point of view,” Hirst says, “it’s like discovering all of a sudden that you’ve been sitting on Mark Twain’s last major literary work and you didn’t know it!”

The result has delighted many reviewers. “Mark Twain is his own greatest character in this brilliant self-portrait,” said Publishers Weekly. "Dip into the first enormous volume …” from this seemingly well-known figure in American history, The New York Times review said, and “Twain will begin to seem strange again, alluring and still astonishing, but less sure-footed, and at times both puzzled and puzzling in ways that still resonate with us, though not the ways we might expect." In short, the Wall Street Journal observed, “every word beguiles.”

For more information, see the Mark Twain Project Web site and the Mark Twain Papers & Project Web site .

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Mark Twain Papers (Series Completed)

Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 3: The Complete and Authoritative Edition

• by Mark Twain (Author), Harriet E. Smith (Editor), Benjamin Griffin (Editor), Victor Fischer (Editor)
• October 2015
• Hardcover  $45.00 ,  £38.00 | eBook  $45.00 ,  £38.00

Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2: The Complete and Authoritative Edition

• by Mark Twain (Author), Benjamin Griffin (Editor), Harriet E. Smith (Editor), Victor Fischer (Editor)
• October 2013

Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1: The Complete and Authoritative Edition

• November 2010

Mark Twain's Letters, Volume 6: 1874-1875

• by Mark Twain (Author), Michael Barry Frank (Editor), Harriet E. Smith (Editor)
• November 2002
• Hardcover  $125.00 ,  £105.00 | eBook  $85.00 ,  £71.00

Mark Twain's Letters, Volume 5: 1872-1873

• by Mark Twain (Author), Lin Salamo (Editor), Harriet E. Smith (Editor)

Mark Twain's Letters, Volume 4: 1870–1871

• by Mark Twain (Author), Victor Fischer (Editor), Michael Barry Frank (Editor), Lin Salamo (Editor)
• December 1995

Mark Twain's Letters, Volume 3: 1869

• by Mark Twain (Author), Victor Fischer (Editor), Michael Barry Frank (Editor), Dahlia Armon (Editor)
• Hardcover  $125.00 ,  £105.00

Mark Twain's Letters, Volume 2: 1867-1868

• by Mark Twain (Author), Harriet E. Smith (Editor), Richard Bucci (Editor), Lin Salamo (Editor)
• February 1990
• Hardcover  $125.00 ,  £105.00 | eBook  $75.00 ,  £63.00

Mark Twain's Letters, Volume 1: 1853-1866

• by Mark Twain (Author), Edgar Marquess Branch (Editor), Michael Barry Frank (Editor), Kenneth M. Sanderson (Editor)
• Hardcover  $125.00 ,  £105.00 | eBook  $65.00 ,  £55.00

Mark Twain's Notebooks and Journals, Volume III: 1883-1891

• by Mark Twain (Author), Robert Browning (Editor), Michael Barry Frank (Editor), Lin Salamo (Editor)
• February 1980
• Hardcover  $84.00 ,  £70.00 | eBook  $85.00 ,  £71.00

This page has been archived and is no longer being updated regularly.

Time Capsule

The psychologies of Mark Twain

The author's biting social commentaries have deep roots in psychology.

By Martin Zehr

April 2010, Vol 41, No. 4

Print version: page 28

A century after his greatly “exaggerated” death, Mark Twain continues to demonstrate his relevance to history and literature. From his childhood in Hannibal, Mo., through careers as a printer’s devil, steamboat pilot, prospector, journalist, lecturer, publisher and author, he became an international celebrity and, at his death, in April 1910, Twain was much more than a “mere humorist.” His reputation as a sharp social critic was by then well-established through his verbal assaults on racial and sexual inequality; his anti-imperialist writings; and his fervent support of causes such as treatment of animals, including opposition to vivisection in animal experimentation.

Less known, perhaps, are Twain’s connections to psychology, although it’s no surprise that a man whose writings throughout his career are dominated by his fascination with human nature would be interested in the field. Throughout his life, Twain was an avid student of science and its implications for human behavior. He was an early adherent of Darwinian ideas of evolution after reading “The Descent of Man,” taking an opportunity to meet its author during a speaking tour in England. He also met with Herbert Spencer, whose “Principles of Psychology,” the first formal text on the subject, influenced Twain’s thinking on the genesis of instincts and their resistance to modification.

Twain’s connections with the American psychologist William James are well documented. Although Twain was not a particular fan of the writing of James’s literary brother, Henry, Twain and William James shared many interests and associations, dating from 1884, when both joined the newly formed American branch of the Society for Psychical Research. The two shared an interest in the paranormal, and Twain was specifically interested in the possibility of thought-transference, which he referred to as “mental telegraphy” in a letter printed in the first volume of the society’s journal. Twain and James met in Italy in 1892, the same year James became the first president of the American Psychological Association. They maintained an active friendship for the rest of their lives. (James also died in 1910.) Twain was strongly influenced by his friend’s analysis of behavior. He read James’s chapter on habit with great interest, recognizing his own pronouncements on the importance of “training,” as in this excerpt from “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court:”

… there is no such thing as nature; what we call by that misleading name is merely heredity and training.

Twain’s connection with James was strengthened by their opposition to the U.S. occupation of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War. James was elected vice president of the Anti-Imperialist League in 1904, and Twain was vice president of the New York chapter of the organization. James no doubt agreed with his friend’s assertion: “I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.”

Twain and James denounced the American military’s use of torture against the leaders of the Philippine independence movement, specifically waterboarding, referred to sardonically by Twain as the “water-cure.” Twain’s official biographer, Albert Bigelow Paine, observed, “When he undertook to give expression to his feelings on this subject he boiled so when he touched pen to paper to write of it that it was simply impossible for him to say anything within the bounds of print.”

The immediacy and unequivocal invective employed by Twain in his verbal assault on this and other American military practices during this period likely would find receptive ears among today’s psychologists. During the same decade, Twain was also active in the anti-vivisection movement, an offshoot of a lifelong abhorrence to animal cruelty, and was speaking out as an advocate of women’s suffrage (“I should like to see that whip-lash, the ballot, in the hands of women.”), a goal that would not be achieved in the United States until a decade following his death.

‘They know as well as I do’

One quality that characterizes much of Twain’s writing is his uncanny ability to see the world through the eyes of the “other,” underscoring the empathy that infuses his works. From the perspective of formal psychology, Twain and his most notable characters are operating within Piaget’s stage four, Formal Operations, demonstrating their capacity to see their environment from several perspectives. Twain’s protagonists are often operating within the “post-conventional morality” described in Lawrence Kohlberg’s stages of moral development, in the sense that they implicitly recognize basic human rights.

An early example of Twain’s flexibility of perspective is contained in his first major work, “The Innocents Abroad,” when he comments regarding the prayer of the “grumblers” aboard ship for “fair winds” with the following repudiation:

… they know as well as I do that this is the only ship going east this time of the year, but there’s a thousand coming west — what’s a fair wind for us is a head-wind to them!

“The Innocents Abroad” also contains Twain’s verdict, which would remain unchanged, that, “Human nature is very much the same all over the world.”

The best-known example of a character who gradually adopts the perspective of the other in the course of his moral development is Huckleberry Finn, the boy who epitomizes the clash between a “sound heart” and a “deformed conscience.” In one scene, Huck, after witnessing the slave Jim’s distress while thinking of his dispersed family, concludes:

I do believe he cared just as much for his people as white folks does for their’n. It don’t seem natural, but I reckon it’s so.

It’s not too much of a “stretcher” for the reader to conclude that the primary “moral” of “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” is the transforming power of the ability to adopt another’s perspective. Twain employs a literal switching of characters in service of the experience of the other in “The Prince and the Pauper” and “Pudd’nhead Wilson,” the latter constituting an example of the overwhelming influence of environment in racial issues. Huck’s ability to reject, in part, one overlearned aspect of his “deformed conscience” reflects Twain’s own views on the power of environmental factors as determinants of behavior. (“The outside influences are always pouring in upon us, and we are always obeying their orders and accepting their verdicts.”)

‘The damned human race’

The evidence from a lifetime review of Mark Twain’s writings supports the view of a behaviorist, deterministic bent in his perspective on human nature. A number of his lesser-known pieces — for example, “Corn-Pone Opinions” — underscore Twain’s assessment of environment as a controlling circumstance. (“You tell me whar a man gits his corn pone, en I’ll tell you what his ’pinions is.”) In another piece, “The Turning Point of My Life,” he catalogs a succession of events, or “links” in the “chain of circumstances,” that underscore the importance of external factors in his own life. Twain does, however, have a connection to Freudian psychology with which many readers may be unaware. During an 18-month period in 1898–99, the Clemens family lived in Vienna, Austria, where Twain’s popularity was as strong as any place on the globe. Invitations to his public appearances were coveted by fin-de-siecle Viennese, including a then-little-known Sigmund Freud. In a letter to his colleague Wilhelm Fleiss, Freud explains his absence from the lecture of another physician with the following statement:

“Schweninger’s performance, there at the talking circus, was a real disgrace! I did not attend, of course; instead I treated myself to listening to our old friend Mark Twain in person, which was a sheer delight.”

Schweninger was the personal physician to Otto von Bismarck, the political architect of the German empire. It’s doubtful that Twain and Freud ever met, but their paths certainly crossed many times during Twain’s extended stay. It is evident, however, that Twain had little, if any, notable impact on Freud’s adeptness in the expression of humor.

Any question regarding Twain’s relevance to psychology and the study of human behavior in the 21st century can be dispelled with one recent example. Consider the best-seller “Outliers,” by Malcolm Gladwell, with its discussion and case examples illustrating the primary elements of success in a varied range of human endeavors. If Gladwell had never read any of Mark Twain’s writings, it is obvious that he would agree with Twain’s conclusions that circumstance and training are the critical explanatory components of human action. Indeed, one important difference between Twain’s 1906 book, “What is Man?” and “Outliers” is the substitution of Twain’s subjective, experience-based opinions with Gladwell’s objective, data-based conclusions.

Twain’s often caustic commentary regarding the behavior of the members of his species, “the damned human race,” himself included, was based on acute observation motivated by an empathy that he traced to his mother’s influence— she famously adopted every stray cat roaming the streets of Hannibal. Coupled with his lifelong study of what might loosely be termed “human nature” and his active interest in the sciences of his era, it is no surprise that his writings often have as their focus matters consonant with the budding formal discipline of psychology, as well as the psychology of our own era.

Martin Zehr, PhD, JD, is a clinical psychologist in Kansas City, Mo. He is a member of the Mark Twain Circle of America and was a 2006 recipient of a Quarry Farm Fellowship, which allowed him the opportunity to study at the Center for Mark Twain Studies in Elmira, N.Y., while living in the summer home of Sam Clemens and his family. Zehr has been invited to the American Literature Association Convention in San Francisco in May to discuss his discovery and republication of a Twain article written in 1868 and generally unknown to Twain scholars .

Suggested reading

Fishkin, Shelley Fisher. Lighting Out for the Territory: Reflections on Mark Twain and American Culture . New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Horn, Jason Gary. Mark Twain & William James: Crafting a Free Self . Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1996.

Powers, Ron. Mark Twain: A Life . New York: Free Press, 2005.

Quirk, Tom. Mark Twain and Human Nature . Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2007.

Twain, Mark. Mark Twain’s Autobiography (2 vols.). New York: Harpers, 1924.

Zehr, Martin. The Vision of the Other in Mark Twain’s ‘The War Prayer.’ Mark Twain Studies, Vol. 2, 2006, pp. 87–92.

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Jack L. Treynor Papers Open for Research

Post contributed by Nestor Lovera Nieto, Part-time Research Scholar for the Economists’ Papers Archive and Visiting Scholar at the Center for the History of Political Economy.

The Jack L. Treynor papers are now open for research as part of the Economists’ Papers Archive, which is a collaboration between the Rubenstein Library and the Center for the History of Political Economy. Jack Lawrence Treynor (1930-2016) was a white American economist who was born in the railroad town of Council Bluffs, Iowa. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Haverford College in 1951 and a Master of Business Administration (with distinction) from Harvard Business School in 1955. Between these two degrees, he was drafted during the Korean War and served for two years with the US Army Signal Corps in New Jersey.

Treynor was one of the first to explore the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) in “Market Value, Time, and Risk” in 1961. Although part of this writing was not published until 1999, it was mimeographed and widely circulated throughout the profession by colleagues who recognized its value. In fact, some of Treynor’s colleagues speculate that had he published his work on CAPM, he might have been a Nobel Prize laureate. In 1990, William F. Sharpe was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for his role in developing CAPM, which he had done independently of Treynor around the same time and published in 1964.

Treynor not only published under his own name but the names of two notable 19th-century economists: Walter Bagehot and Alf(red) Marshall. In fact, one of Treynor’s most cited articles, “The Only Game in Town” (1971), was written under Bagehot rather than Treynor. His motivations for using these pseudonyms and why he specifically chose these two remain a mystery yet to be unraveled.

The material in this collection came from Treynor’s home, which doubled as his office for Treynor Capital Management (TCM) after it was established in 1985, and two women from his family directly supported his professional career. His wife Elizabeth “Betsy” Treynor served as TCM’s administrative assistant and played a significant role as the creator or co-creator of many records, including most of the electronic ones. Additionally, there are printouts of emails intended for Jack but addressed to Betsy, with her responding either on his behalf or in her own capacity.

His daughter Wendy Treynor, who double-majored in economics and mathematics before pursuing a career in social psychology, annotated drafts of articles and conducted regression analysis.

One unique aspect of this collection is the abundance of handwritten items, including over 50 letter-size notepads and hundreds of transparencies (the originals of which have been photocopied and subsequently discarded; preservation photocopies have been retained in the collection).

Unlike most other economists represented in the Economists’ Papers Archives, Treynor was not a lifetime academic, having spent only 1985 to 1989 as a visiting professor at two institutions. Instead, his day job was as a financial analyst, with his research and writing on the side.

Treynor made significant contributions to the field of financial analysis, such that his peers in professional associations recognized him as having “changed the direction of the profession.” Demonstrating his innovative spirit, Treynor also registered a patent in 2004 for a “Method for maintaining an absolute risk level for an investment portfolio.”

Although the above diagram might leave us scratching our heads, it is undeniably cool because it is so well-drawn. Speaking of cool, Treynor was also an avid model train collector and layout builder (a nod to his hometown roots) and enjoyed writing plays in his spare time.

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Dispatches from the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Duke University