>Could you perhaps post a summary or table of contents to the listserv?
>
>Mary Uhl
>The University of Iowa


Sure.  Here's the blurb on the back that summarizes:

This collection of essays edited by Richard Hill & Jim McWilliams focuses
on Mark Twain scholarship and how it has evolved from about 1900 until
2000, with a particular emphasis on critical excess in the last two
decades. The essays in this book address the late 20th-century critics who
seem overly concerned with a variety of issues and questions tangential to
Twain's writing. It would seem that the more sensational the claim about
Twain or his work (whether or not he was an abusive parent, racist,
homosexual, pedophile, drunkard--and so on), the more recognition the
claimants have received from both the popular and academic presses. This
book is for those who appreciate Mark Twain's writing and who have an
abiding interest in keeping the record straight on his life and work, no
matter which current Twain "expert" is grabbing headlines. Louis Budd, the
contemporary dean of Twain scholars, speaks in his introduction for
generations of readers in praising Twain as an extraordinary writer and
individual.

"Been There, Done That (Not): Stalking Mark Twain"
         Louis J. Budd

"Mark Twain as He Is Taught: American Literature Anthologies, 1919-1998"
         Joseph Csicsila

"Introduction to _The True Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_"
         John Seelye

"The Crowded Raft: _Huckleberry Finn_ & Its Critics"
         J. C. Furnas

"Overreaching: Critical Agenda and the Ending of _Huck Finn_"
         Richard Hill

"Focused Too Well for Irony: _Pudd'nhead Wilson_ and Its Modern Critics"
         Henry B. Wonham

"How Many Children Had Huckleberry Finn?"
         Gary P. Henrickson

"Mark Twain and the New Americanist"
         Glen M. Johnson

"OUR Mark Twain? or, Some Thoughts on the Autobiographical Critic"
         Harold K. Bush, Jr.

Plus a handsome photo of Twain from 1903 on the cover and a funny
frontispiece of Twain lecturing from an 1885 issue of _Puck_.

Jim

Dr. Jim McWilliams
Dickinson State University
Dickinson ND