Dear all,

Recently there were some posts about the new play, "Is He Dead," that
recently opened in NYC.

Laura Cerruti's post of December 13 linked us to numerous news reports
that describe the story as being "recently discovered." I am not sure
exactly what was meant by that, because I have the September 1893
edition of The Cosmopolitan magazine, and the story is published there
on page 629 under the title, "Is He Living or Is He Dead?" The story
features illustrations by Alice Barber.

This issue of Cosmo covered the 1893 World's Fair (Columbian
Exposition) and included over 100 illustrations from the fair.
Naturally most of this issue is dedicated to the fair. Also, it might
interest Twain scholars to know that following Twain's story is a
story by W. D. Howells on page 635, titled, "A Traveler from Altruria."

So I am wondering if the present state of knowledge about this story
was that it was never published, or was lost, or what. But it was
certainly in Cosmo!

I would have brought this up sooner but I had loaned the issue out to
a colleague in Sweden and just now received it back, and thus could
not confirm until now that the story was indeed in there.

If anyone would like to pursue this further I would be pleased to
email a photocopy of the Cosmo table of contents or even the story
itself.

Holiday cheers to all,

Steve Crawford
University of Jyväskylä
Finland