BOOK REVIEW
The following review was written for the Mark Twain Forum by Kevin Mac
Donnell.
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Reviewed for the Mark Twain Forum by:
Kevin Mac Donnell
Copyright (c) 2019 Mark Twain Forum. This review may not be published or
redistributed in any medium without permission.
_Mark Twain's Literary Resources: A Reconstruction of His Library and
Reading. Volume 1._ By Alan Gribben. NewSouth, 2019. Pp. 350. $60.00. ISBN
978-1-58838-343-3 (cloth). ISBN 978-1-60306-453-8 (ebook).
Anyone familiar with Twain studies of the last four decades knows that the
most eagerly anticipated work in the field is the revised and enlarged
edition of Alan Gribben's _Mark Twain's Library: A Reconstruction_ (1980).
The first edition itself was eagerly anticipated: Six years before it
appeared, Hamlin Hill's famous must-read essay "Who Killed Mark Twain?"
appeared in _American Literary Realism_, where Hill predicted that "source
and influence hunters will have a field-day tracking through its
encyclopedic catalog of volumes the humorist owned and annotated."
Published in an edition of 500 copies, nearly all were sold to libraries
and the book quickly went out of print, driving the price for used copies
as high as $450, putting it out of the reach of most Twainians. This was
especially unfortunate because the immense utility of the work--the result
of its ingenious conception and meticulous execution--had advanced the
direction and scope of Twain studies more than any other work published
since. It may be counted as one of the handful of essential reference works
on Twain, along with Paine's (albeit flawed) biography of Twain, the Mark
Twain Project editions of Twain's _Letters_ and _Autobiography_, and R.
Kent Rasmussen's _Mark Twain A to Z_.
The first of the three volumes of the new edition has now been published;
the second and third volumes will appear later this year and in 2020, and
will be reviewed separately as they are published. Those second and third
volumes will contain the catalogue of the books Twain actually owned or
read, describing their editions, annotations, and ownership markings, and
their influence on Twain's writings. This first volume sets the stage for
the two volumes to follow, and _must_ be read first in order to fully
understand Twain's library, how he used it, and how best to apply that
knowledge to any study of his creative process.
This first volume gathers together twenty-five of Alan Gribben's essays
about the formation, influence, and dispersal of Mark Twain's library,
along with a new introduction by Gribben, a foreword by R. Kent Rasmussen,
and an expanded Critical Bibliography that nicely captures the crowded
shelf of studies based upon Twain's readings. The critical bibliography
begins with Paine's 1912 biography which foolishly projected Twain's
"reading interests during his final four years onto other periods of his
life . . ." (269). The critical bibliography even includes a 1924 master's
thesis that was the earliest guide to Twain's reading.
Gribben's essays, published over the last forty-seven years tell one
fascinating tale after another. He describes Twain's "Library of Literary
Hogwash" which consisted of books so bad that they were relished by Twain
as "_exquisitely_ bad." He describes Twain's uncanny ability to read sense
into Robert Browning's dense poetry, the evocative story behind Susy
Clemens's set of Shakespeare, Tom Sawyer's (and America's) falling under
the spell of romantic adventure stories, the literary knowledge on display
in _Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_, Twain's favorite books, Twain's
earliest literary exposures, the popular myth of Twain as an unlettered
author and how Twain himself promoted that public illusion, Twain's
familiarity with the Arthurian legends, Twain's debt to "boy's books" when
composing his own greatest works, the ways certain books influenced
particular writings by Twain, and how Twain's reading habits and tastes
evolved over time. Written during five decades, these accounts
interconnect, and they are all page-turners, especially when Gribben
describes his adventures in tracking down Twain's widely dispersed library.
He tracks down nearly 100 books from Twain's library that had been given to
Katy Leary. Another book from Twain's library shows up through interlibrary
loan. Forgeries are discovered in public and private collections. The
maddening story of how Twain's library was scattered in all directions is
balanced by the gratifying story of how much of it has been recovered and
preserved.
In addition to enlarging the inventory of surviving books and identifying
the specific editions of the books listed in the various sales of books
from Twain's library, Gribben has also identified much new evidence of
Twain's readings in Twain's own writings. In his writings Twain often
mentions authors or books by name, but he more often alludes to people or
events, both fictional and nonfictional, that reflect his own reading. Of
course, Gribben is not the only person who has identified such sources, and
he includes the findings of many others' work, all reflected in his
extensive Critical Bibliography or in the individual catalogue entries.
Twain's reading habits had already expanded beyond the horizons of Hannibal
when, as a teenager in 1852, he read an issue of the _Philadelphia Courier_
that gave him the idea of writing an essay about Hannibal that he published
in that paper a short time later. He would remain a daily reader of
newspapers for the rest of his life. Thanks to the newspaper exchange
system, he read papers from all over the country every day, seeking fodder
to fill the pages of the newspapers where he was employed early in his
career, and later as a newspaper owner and editor. As a young man he read
obscure short-lived comic journals, and all his life he read the major
magazines of his day. He was photographed with piles of magazines and
newspapers, sometimes reading a magazine or paper whose name and date can
be identified.
Twain was a life-long patron of libraries, taking advantage of two
printers' association libraries (one held 4,000 volumes) while employed as
a type-setter in New York City in 1853. He was awarded a sterling silver
key in return for officiating at a library opening in England, and he
befriended Andrew Carnegie, who established more public libraries in the
United States than any other library benefactor in US history. Twain
himself gave books from his own library to libraries several times in his
life, most notably establishing a public library in Redding, Connecticut,
with a large donation of books from his own shelves.
Mark Twain was as much a reader as a writer, a bibliophile and connoisseur
who appreciated fine printing and elegant bindings, and also an avid reader
who literally consumed books, sometimes tearing or cutting them to pieces.
Twain's copy of Francis Galton's _Finger Prints_ (1892) does not survive,
but he clipped out the illustration of fingerprints from the title-page of
his copy and sent it to his publisher when brainstorming an idea for the
title-page design for _Pudd'nhead Wilson_. On the other hand, the books he
gave his wife and daughters were often sumptuously bound with heavily gilt
full leather bindings with silk end papers, like the edition of Browning he
gave his daughter Susy, or a set of Sir Walter Scott he gave his wife. A
copy of Bayard Taylor's _Home Ballads_ (1882) that Olivia Clemens gave her
mother on behalf of Jean and Clara (Susy was then old enough to select her
own gift for her grandmother) was elaborately bound in leather with
striking bird's-eye maple panels inset on the front and back covers.
Although Twain sometimes destroyed books in the service of his art,
beautiful examples of the book arts adorned the shelves of the Clemens
family library and were prized.
Despite his vast and varied life-long reading habits, he cultivated a
public persona of not being particularly well-read, once writing an editor
of _The Critic_ that soliciting his opinion of what people should read
would be worthless to readers of _The Critic_ because he read mostly
history and biography, and that the sum total of the fiction and poetry
that he'd read would barely fill three octavo volumes. Paine and Howells
both played roles in perpetuating the myth that Twain did not appreciate
_belles-lettres_. In truth, Twain's personal library consisted of at least
3,000 volumes, of which slightly more than one-third survive. His access to
the Langdon family library in Elmira, where he spent several months every
year during the twenty most productive years of his writing career,
broadened the scope of his available reading materials.
It is sometimes forgotten that in Twain's day there was no television,
radio, movie theaters, internet, or other distractions competing as sources
of news or entertainment. Live entertainment--lectures, music, stage
performances, circuses, panoramas, carnivals, fairs, church socials, sewing
circles, reading clubs, and the like--filled many hours, but reading in the
home accounted for many more hours of the day, and there was a centuries
old tradition of reading aloud in church, school, and at home. That
tradition was honored in the Clemens household. Twain read much more than
most Americans and owned a library several times larger than those found in
the majority of nineteenth century households.
Fortunately for Twainians, he also annotated his books more heavily than
most readers of his time, as demonstrated by the surviving third of his
library, as well as the many books in the Langdon family library that he
did not hesitate to mark up as he pleased. He was well-versed in the Greek
and Roman classics, the Bible, and classic works of literature from several
cultures, and his library also reflected a broad range of readings in
religion, politics, history, contemporary novels and poetry, travel,
biography, natural history, and medicine, as well as more narrow interests
like surnames, phrenology, astronomy, English sign-posts, and collections
of criminal trials. Twain's annotations often reflect a deep interest in
these subjects with cross-references to his other reading. Twain's stories
and characters may have come from his personal experiences, but the themes
and structures of his writings can be directly traced to his reading.
Twain's annotations are revelatory and make for entertaining reading. If
Twain's public writings are free of starch and full of truth, his book
annotations are free of restraint and bursting with naked candor,
especially when he made notations he knew his wife and children--and future
owners of these books--might read.
It would be pretty to think that every book Twain ever read survived in his
library up to the time of his death, but the dispersal of his library began
with Twain himself during his lifetime. When he traveled for extended
periods his library was routinely put into storage (in 1878-1879,
1891-1900, and 1903-1904) and not all of his books found their way back to
his shelves. He sent two "bushels" of books to help a library near his
Riverdale home in 1903, and he donated "four or five hundred old books" to
the Redding town library in June 1908. His daughter Clara donated at least
1,750 more volumes to that library in Redding, Connecticut, a short drive
down the road from his last home, Stormfield--there is some evidence the
number might have been as many as 3,500 volumes. Some of those books were
retained by the vice-president of that library, Twain's friend and
illustrator, Dan Beard. It appears some of those books were sold almost
immediately at a town "fair" to benefit the library. Other books were left
with Albert Bigelow Paine.
When Twain died, his bereaved long-time housekeeper, Katy Leary, was
allowed to keep ninety books from his library; those volumes would later be
rescued from a porch where they had been left in grocery bags to be hauled
away. Clara and Ossip Gabrilowitsch lived for a time at Stormfield after
Twain's death, and before they moved, Clara gave away household items to
her neighbors, like pots and pans and bric-a-brac, and she may have given
away some books as well. In 1911 an auction was held in New York with 556
lots of books and household items from Mark Twain's estate, scattering 483
of his books far and wide, some never to be seen again. In the 1930s and
1940s Clara sometimes gave away books from her father's library, first in
Detroit and later in Los Angeles, and through a local bookseller she sold
sixty books to Estelle Doheny, a wealthy collector whose collection was
widely scattered when sold at auction in 1988 and 1989.
In 1951 Clara emptied most of her remaining shelves, and more than 300
lots of books from Twain's library were sold at a public auction held in a
carnival-like atmosphere on the grounds of her Hollywood home--complete
with a hot dog stand. One buyer stored his purchases in barrels which were
discovered in 1997, sent to auction, and are now at the Mark Twain House &
Museum in Hartford. In 1952, the librarian at the Mark Twain Library in
Redding held a sale that rid the small town library of books that were not
being checked out and taking up much-needed shelf space. Unfortunately,
that sale included an undetermined number of books from Twain's original
donation from his library, many of which have yet to resurface.
Despite more than a century of dispersal and destruction, many of Twain's
books have been preserved. The bulk of his surviving books are to be found
at The Mark Twain House and Museum in Hartford (300 vols.), The Mark Twain
Papers at University of California at Berkeley (170 vols.), The Center for
Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College (ninety vols., plus 1,500 vols. from
the Langdon family library of which nearly 700 date from Twain's time in
Elmira--some with Twain's annotations), the Mark Twain Library in Redding,
Connecticut (240 vols.), and the personal collection of Kevin Mac Donnell
(300 vols., plus forty-four Langdon family library books from Twain's time
in Elmira--some with Twain's annotations). These counts are approximate and
all are "volume counts" that include multi-volume sets which often include
multiple annotated volumes. Compared to other author's libraries, Twainians
have less to complain about than they might first imagine.
Literature on authors' libraries is relatively sparse, but those seeking
context, might consult _Collecting, Curating, and Researching Writers'
Libraries_ (2014), a collection of essays and interviews edited by Richard
Oram and Joseph Nicholson which includes a long list of authors' libraries
with data on how much of each library survives, and where. Twain's library
fares quite well when compared to the libraries of Kate Chopin, Stephen
Crane, Charles Dickens, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, William
Dean Howells, Henry James, Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry David
Thoreau, and Walt Whitman. Catalogues of many of those libraries have
appeared over the decades, but none compare to the comprehensive
investigation that Gribben has devoted to Twain.
Gribben's astonishing accomplishment is one of the handful in Twain studies
that will stand as a foundational reference work for generations. Of
course, new volumes from Twain's library will continue to appear, and in
another fifty years--if luck holds and enough long-lost volumes from
Twain's library continue to come to light--there may be a need for an
addendum, but the solid foundation laid by Gribben will endure. In the
meantime Twainians should count themselves lucky and get to work
immediately, exploring the new avenues of enquiry suggested by Gribben's
tireless labor, while those who study the writings of Dickens, Hawthorne,
James, Melville, Poe, Whitman and other literary giants look on helplessly
from the sidelines and lament that no Gribben has yet appeared among them.
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