BOOK REVIEW

 _Cartoons and Caricatures of Mark Twain in Context: Reformer and Social
Critic, 1869-1910_. By Leslie Diane Myrick and Gary Scharnhorst. University
of Alabama Press, 2024. Pp. 119. Hardcover: $110.00, ISBN 9780817321727.
Paperback: $29.95, ISBN 9780817361044.

Many books reviewed on the Mark Twain Forum are available at discounted
prices from the Twain Web Bookstore. Purchases from this site generate
commissions that benefit the Mark Twain Project. Please visit <
http://www.twainweb.net>

Reviewed for the Mark Twain Forum by:
Barbara Schmidt

Copyright (c) 2024 Mark Twain Forum. This review may not be published or
redistributed in any medium without permission.


Our late colleague Hal Bush is quoted in the Afterword of _Cartoons and
Caricatures of Mark Twain In Context_ that Mark Twain's likeness was
probably "the most frequently reproduced of any person in all of human
history." It is always a pleasure to see a new edition arrive that provides
fresh evidence from historical archives demonstrating that Bush was correct.

In their Introduction, the authors state that this volume is their first
step toward establishing a finding list of Mark Twain photographs,
portraits, and cartoons. Milton Meltzer was one of the first to publish a
volume with rare cartoons and caricatures in _Mark Twain Himself_ in 1960.
Thirteen of Melzer's 41 cartoons and caricatures are reproduced in this
volume. In 1984 Louis J. Budd published _Our Mark Twain: The Making of His
Public Personality_ which more precisely focused on how newspaper and
magazine artists helped shape readers' perceptions of Mark Twain. Budd's
volume featured over 46 editorial newspaper and magazine graphics gathered
from old newspaper and journal clippings and microfilm. Eleven of Budd's 46
graphics are reproduced in _Cartoons and Caricatures of Mark Twain In
Context_. This is the first volume since 1984 that returns to the source of
nineteenth century archival newspaper and magazine visuals to continue the
study.

Amid the growing proliferation of online historical newspaper databases
with their search engines, new discoveries are becoming easier and more
frequent. This volume features 79 cartoons and caricatures from about 600
that were collected by Myrick and Scharnhorst by the year 2020 (including
the files of the late Lou Budd that were graciously provided by Elmira
College). The graphics provide another window into how Mark Twain's
reputation grew and was perceived via editorial opinions expressed in a
comic visual. Many graphics in this book have probably never before been
seen by present-day Mark Twain scholars.

The volume features nineteen chapters, brief contextual notes, and an
appendix with minimal biographical data for about 60 illustrators. Myrick,
a former editor with the Mark Twain Project, has a keen eye for deciphering
signatures and glyphs of illustrators as well as tiny details in the
drawings that are significant. Among the faces that appear alongside Mark
Twain in these illustrations are luminaries of the nineteen century.
However, many are now long-forgotten and likely presented challenges to
identify: Anthony Comstock, W. H. Vanderbilt, Roscoe Conkling, Samuel
Tilden, and Henry Bergh, for example.

Among the topics covered in this book are Mark Twain's campaign for
international copyright reform. The topic caught the attention of noted
illustrators such as Thomas Nast and Joseph Keppler. Keppler's illustration
"The Pirate Publisher" (p. 15) from an 1886 edition of _Puck_ features at
least sixteen identifiable faces of other famous nineteenth century authors
alongside Mark Twain battling a pirate publisher. These include Bret Harte,
William Dean Howells, George Washington Cable, Charles Dudley Warner,
Robert Louis Stevenson, and Lewis Carroll among others.

Other topics that Mark Twain became involved in, and that graphic artists
hastily cashed in on, include language and spelling reform,
anti-imperialism, anti-Russian sentiments, and the ridiculed Concord School
of Philosophy. As Mark Twain's reputation grew, there is the noticeable
movement of newspaper artists across the nation from the East Coast to the
West caricaturing his activities on their editorial pages.

When Mark Twain returned to the United States in 1900 after living abroad
for a number of years, American newspaper and magazine cartoonists lost no
time taking advantage of his presence again on the national scene. His
involvement in hauling a cabman into court for the crime of overcharging
his maid for a ride provided humorous fodder in newspapers from New York to
Philadelphia. His political campaign against a corrupt Tammany Hall in New
York was caricatured in newspapers in New York, Minnesota and as far west
as Montana. Mark Twain's animosity toward Christian Science and its founder
Mary Baker Eddy was another topic that provided more rich veins for
humorous editorial illustration.

The New York press took advantage of numerous opportunities to caricature
Mark Twain in the company of his wealthy friends and benefactors. Among
these were Henry Huttleston Rogers (misspelled and indexed as Henry
"Huddleston" Rogers in this volume); Andrew Carnegie; John Pierpont Morgan;
and John D. Rockefeller, Jr. During the later years of Mark Twain's life,
editorial artists living in the cities of Pittsburgh and St. Louis, plagued
with air pollution and soot, lost no time in using Mark Twain's white suit
as a protest against their own environment as they depicted Mark Twain
unable to walk through their cities without coming out a visual ruin.

This volume is a quick, easy, and entertaining read that subtly depicts how
America progressed from regarding Mark Twain as a mere jester in 1874, to a
writer holding a dangerous pen-like deadly weapon, and finally to a lost
national treasure when he died in 1910 and the nation grieved.

Only a small fraction of the approximate 600 known cartoons and caricatures
collected by Myrick and Scharnhorst appear in this volume. The good news is
that more volumes are planned. This project is one that lends itself to the
consideration of establishing an online database of cartoons and
caricatures by date, topic and locale. Putting the difficulty of this task
in perspective: In June 2020, the historical newspaper database
newspapers.com listed a searchable database of over 594 million pages.
Today, just 4 years later, the database lists 963 million pages and still
growing.  More discoveries of Mark Twain cartoons and caricatures from
around the world are inevitable.