On January 20, 1887, Twain penned a 3 page ALS to one Rev. C.D. Crane
opining about books, apparently in response to questions put to him by
the good Reverend. It reads in part:

"Dear Sir, I am just starting away from home, I have no time to think
the questions over & properly consider my answers; but, take a shot on
the wing at the matter as follows: 1. Macaulay; Plutarch; Grant's
Memoirs; Crusoe; Arabian Nights; Gulliver. 2. The same for the girl,
after striking out Crusoe and substituting Tennyson. I can't answer No.
3 in this sudden way." "No. 3" seems to have been a request to name the
12 greatest of the greats. Twain's reply, in part: " . . . there is an
awfulness about the responsibility that makes marriage with one mere
individual & divorcable woman a sacrament sodden with levity by
comparison. In my list I know I should put Shakespeare; & Browning; &
Carlyle (French Revolution only); Sir Thomas Malory (King Arthur);
Parkman's Histories (a hundred of them if there were so many); Arabian
Nights; Johnson (Boswell's) because I like to see that complacent old
gasometer listen to himself talk; Jowett's Plato; & 'B.B.' (a book which
I wrote some years ago, not for publication but just for my own private
reading."

Does anyone know anything about C.D. Crane, and what exactly he asked Twain?

Thanks very much,

Sara