I want to thank Alan Rankin for finding and respecting Nina Gabrilowitsch's
diary and for offering its salient points to the Twain community.
The excerpts he chose for the Twain site are marvelously revealing and
enticing in much the same way as are Anne Frank's and with the great irony
of another tragic end.
Rankin's own story of first reading the diary and researching the somewhat
anonymous young girl is gratifying
It is good he came to appreciate this young writer before he ever knew who
she was.

I am glad he laid the requested items on her grave, and I can relate to his
crying there.
I had a similar experience over the tragedies in that family as I sat last
year on the porch of Quarry Farm reading over my talk for that evening,
As I read through the letters of New Orleans writer Grace King and the
Clemenses that I had chosen for presenting, I surprised myself by breaking
into tears.  It was all I could do to hold it together that night as I
delivered the last exchanges between Clara Clemens and King.

The volume that includes those letters will be available for reading in a
few weeks as *A New Orleans Author in Mark Twain's Court: Grace King's
Letters from New England Sojourns*.

There, Clara does mention Nina in passing in her final few letters, one
when Nina was a sophomore in college.
I would like to exchange emails with Alan Rankin and thank him again for
his fine discovery and his good, good work in awakening us to a young
girl's humanity.

Miki Pfeffer


On Mon, Oct 7, 2019 at 10:39 AM Martin Zehr <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Thanks, Matt, for sharing this glimpse into Nina’s life, a record of a
> year which stands in sharp contrast to what most of us recall about Nina.
> If we think of her at all, it’s the story of the last years of her life and
> the circumstances surrounding her death.   Reminds me of the common
> depiction of Twain’s last years, at least until Michael Shelden, in his
> book, Mark Twain: Man in White: The Grand Adventure of His Final Years,
> provided us with a more balanced account than had heretofore existed.
>
> Martin Zehr
> Marion Bloch Neuroscience Institute
> Kansas City, Missouri
>
> Sent from Mail for Windows 10
>
> From: Matthew Seybold
> Sent: Monday, October 7, 2019 8:59 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Nina's Lost Diary
> As many of you know, the story of Sam and Livy’s granddaughter, Nina
> Gabrilowitsch, is a tragic one. Few have captured that tragedy so well as
> Alan Rankin, as he writes about the decades he spent trying to unravel the
> mystery of her “lost diary,” which he stumbled upon in 1992. I recommend
> keeping some tissues at the ready for this one:
>
>
> https://marktwainstudies.com/finding-the-lost-diary-of-mark-twains-granddaughter-nina-gabrilowitsch/
> <
> https://marktwainstudies.com/finding-the-lost-diary-of-mark-twains-granddaughter-nina-gabrilowitsch/
> >
>
> ***************
> Matt Seybold
> Assistant Professor of American Literature & Mark Twain Studies
> Elmira College
> Editor, MarkTwainStudies.org
> MattSeybold.com
>


-- 
Miki Pfeffer, Ph D
*A New Orleans Author in Mark Twain's Court: Letters from Grace King's New
England Sojourns *(fall 2019)
*Southern Ladies and Suffragists: Julia Ward Howe and Women's Rights at the
1884 New Orleans World's Fair*