| Mark Twain's Literary Resources: A Reconstruction of His Library and Reading (Volume One) Contributor(s): Gribben, Alan (Author), Rasmussen, R. Kent (Foreword by) |
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ISBN: 1588383431 ISBN-13: 9781588383433 Publisher: NewSouth Books OUR PRICE: $42.75 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: June 2019 * Not available - Not in print at this time * |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Reference | Bibliographies & Indexes - Biography & Autobiography | Literary Figures - Biography & Autobiography | Reference |
| Dewey: 818.409 |
| LCCN: 2018040870 |
| Physical Information: 1.1" H x 7" W x 10" (1.90 lbs) 328 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: This first installment of the new multi-volume Mark Twain's Literary Resources: A Reconstruction of His Library and Reading recounts Dr. Alan Gribben's fascinating 45-year search for surviving volumes from the large library assembled by Twain and his family. That collection of more than 3,000 titles was dispersed through impromptu donations and abrupt public auctions, but over the years nearly a thousand volumes have been recovered. Gribben's research also encompasses many hundreds of other books, stories, essays, poems, songs, plays, operas, newspapers, and magazines with which Mark Twain was demonstrably familiar. Gribben published the original edition of Mark Twain's Library in 1980. Hailed by the eminent Twain scholar Louis J. Budd as "a superb job that will last for generations," the work nevertheless soon went out of print and for three decades has been a hard-to-find item on the rare book market. Meanwhile, over a distinguished career of writing, teaching, and research on Twain, Gribben continued to annotate, revise, and expand the content such that it has become his life's masterwork. Thoroughly revised, enlarged, and retitled, Mark Twain's Literary Resources: A Reconstruction of His Library and Reading now reappears, to greatly expand our comprehension of the incomparable author's reading tastes and influences. Volume I traces Twain's extensive use of public libraries. It identifies Twain's favorite works, but also reveals his strong dislikes--Chapter 10 is devoted to his "Library of Literary Hogwash," specimens of atrocious poetry and prose that he delighted in ridiculing. In describing Twain's habit of annotating his library books, Gribben reveals his methods of detecting forged autographs and marginal notes that have fooled booksellers, collectors, and libraries. The volume's 25 chapters trace from various perspectives the patterns of Twain's voracious reading and relate what he read to his own literary outpouring. A "Critical Bibliography" evaluates the numerous scholarly books and articles that have studied Twain's reading, and an index guides readers to the volume's diverse subjects. Twain enjoyed cultivating a public image as a largely unread natural talent; on occasion he even denied being acquainted with titles that he had owned, inscribed, and annotated in his own personal library. He convinced many friends and interviewers that he had no appetite for fiction, poetry, drama, or belles-lettres, yet Gribben reveals volumes of evidence to the contrary. He examines this unlettered pose that Twain affected and speculates about the reasons behind it. In reality, whether Twain was memorizing the classic writings of ancient Rome or the more contemporary works of Milton, Byron, Shelley, Dickens, and Tennyson--or, for that matter, quoting from the best-selling fiction and poetry of his day--he exhibited a lifelong hunger to overcome the brevity of his formal education. Several of Gribben's chapters explore the connections between Twain's knowledge of authors such as Malory, Shakespeare, Poe, and Browning, and his own literary works, group readings, and family activities. |
Contributor Bio(s): Rasmussen, R. Kent: - R. Kent Rasmussen has written and edited a dozen books on Mark Twain -- most notably, perhaps, Mark Twain A to Z (1995) and its greatly expanded revision, Critical Companion to Mark Twain: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work (2 vols., 2007). He has also edited Critical Insights: Mark Twain (2010), Dear Mark Twain: Letters from His Readers (2013), and Critical Insights: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (2017); co-edited (with Kevin Mac Donnell) Mark Twain and Youth: Studies in His Life and Writings (2016); and prepared the Penguin Classics editions of both The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (2014) and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (2014). He is currently writing a book on films adapted from Mark Twain's works. Dr. Rasmussen is also recognized as a scholar in African history, a field in which he has published five books.Gribben, Alan: - Alan Gribben, editor and publisher of the Mark Twain Journal: The Author and His Era, is the biographer of the University of Texas library founder Harry Ransom, editor of the NewSouth Edition of Mark Twain's Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, co-editor of Mark Twain on the Move: A Travel Reader, and author of dozens of articles on Twain's intellectual background. For fifteen years he reviewed books and articles about Mark Twain for American Literary Scholarship, An Annual. Dr. Gribben co-founded and served as president of the Mark Twain Circle of America. He has been recognized with a Henry Nash Smith Fellowship from the Center for Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College and other honors for his scholarship and teaching. Auburn University at Montgomery, where he was head of the Department of English and Philosophy for two decades, awarded him a Distinguished Research Professorship and the Nance Alumni Professorship. |