Mark Twain and the Critics, 1891–1910

Over the last twenty years of his life, Mark Twain was a controversial figure. He evolved from the “clown prince of American literature” into a biting social critic and political observer. While some pundits hailed him as a satirist equal to Cervantes and Jonathan Swift, others excoriated him as a “degenerate literary freak” who wielded a “scurrilous and venomous pen.”
This volume traces the evolution of Mark Twain’s public image between 1891 and his death in 1910. It features hundreds of reviews and other critical notices in magazines and newspapers across the U.S. and other English-speaking countries. The selected samples represent the full range of critical opinion, whether favorable or hostile, about his late writings. Sources reflect geographical differences in Twain’s reputation, such as the conflicted responses in the British colonies towards his anti-imperialism and the pious disapproval in the American heartland of his attacks on foreign missions.

Gary Scharnhorst is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English at the University of New Mexico. He is the author or editor of 40 books and the editor in alternating years of the research annual American Literary Scholarship. He lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Leslie Diane Myrick is a retired associate editor of the Mark Twain Project at the University of California, Berkeley. She lives in New York, New York.

Gary Scharnhorst and Leslie Diane Myrick
Format: softcover (7 x 10)
Pages: 304
Bibliographic Info: 13 photos, notes, index
Copyright Date: 2023
pISBN: 978-1-4766-9064-3
eISBN: 978-1-4766-4847-7
Imprint: McFarland

Preface by Gary Scharnhorst 1
Critical Notices 5
“Mental Telegraphy” (1891) 5
“Aix, the Paradise of Rheumatics” (1891) 8
“At the Shrine of St. Wagner” (1891) 10
“Playing Courier” (1892) 10
“The German Chicago” (1892) 11
The American Claimant (1892) 11
Merry Tales (1892) 19
“The £1,000,000 ­­Bank-Note” (1893) 21
The £1,000,000 ­­Bank-Note and Other New Stories (1893) 22
“Adam’s Diary” (1893) 25
“The Esquimau Maiden’s Romance” (1893) 26
Tom Sawyer Abroad (1893–1894) 26
Pudd’nhead Wilson: A Tale (1894) 29
“In Defense of Harriet Shelley” (1894) 31
The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins (1894) 34
“What Paul Bourget Thinks of Us” (1895) 37
“Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses” (1895) 40
“Mental Telegraphy Again” (1895) 44
Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (1895–1896) 44
Tom Sawyer, Detective (1896) 68
Tom Sawyer Abroad, Tom Sawyer, Detective, and Other Stories (1896) 69
Tom Sawyer, Detective and Other Tales (1897) 71
How to Tell a Story and Other Essays (1897) 72
“From India to South Africa” (1897) 77
Following the Equator (1897) 77
More Tramps Abroad (1897) 86
“Stirring Times in Austria” (1898) 96
“At the Appetite Cure” (1898) 97
“About ­­Play-Acting” (1898) 98
“Diplomatic Pay and Clothes” (1899) 99
“Concerning the Jews” (1899) 102
“Christian Science and the Book of Mrs. Eddy” (1899) 108
“My Début as a Literary Person” (1899) 109
“The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg” (1899) 110
“My First Lie, and How I Got Out of It” (1900) 111
The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories and Essays (1900) 112
The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories and Sketches (1900) 117
“A Salutation Speech from the Nineteenth Century to the Twentieth” (1900–1901) 124
“To the Person Sitting in Darkness” (1901) 124
Letter to William J. Lampton (1901) 145
“To My Missionary Critics” (1901) 147
“Adam’s Diary” (1901) 152
A ­­Double-Barrelled Detective Story (1902) 154
“Does the Race of Man Love a Lord?” (1902) 161
“In Defense of General Funston” (1902) 163
Open Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury (1902) 168
“Amended Obituaries” (1902) 169
“Was It Heaven? Or Hell?” (1902) 170
“Christian Science” (1902–1903) 171
“Why Not Abolish It?” (1903) 179
A Dog’s Tale (1903) 181
Extracts from Adam’s Diary (1904) 184
“Saint Joan of Arc” (1904) 191
“Concerning Copyright” (1905) 192
“The Czar’s Soliloquy” (1905) 194
“A Humane Word from Satan” (1905) 196
“A Monument to Adam” (1905) 198
Letter to the Editor re. the Treaty of Portsmouth (1905) 199
King Leopold’s Soliloquy (1905, 1907) 199
Editorial Wild Oats (1905) 212
Eve’s Diary (1906) 214
A Horse’s Tale (1906) 219
The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories (1906) 222
“Chapters from My Autobiography” (1906–1907) 224
Christian Science (1907) 230
Extract from Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven (1907–1908) 254
Is Shakespeare Dead? (1909) 260
The Works of Mark Twain (1895–1910) 271
Notes 277
Index 289