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. Volumes II and III of Mark Twain's Literary Resources:
A Reconstruction of His Library and Reading will be released in
2019 and will deliver an "Annotated Catalog" arranged from A to Z,
documenting in detail the staggering scope of Twain's reading. -
book is one-of-a-kind, a monumental project, representing 45 years
of research - scholarship of the book is impeccable, by writer
internationally known in the Twain community - publisher has a
much-publicized association with Alan Gribben; in 2011 we released
the highly controversial NewSouth Edition of Huck Finn and Tom
Sawyer, edited by Dr. Gribben - Twain is among our more popular
19th-century American writers, and works about him are often of
literary interest
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