Hello all,

A couple of years ago Rick Hill and I placed our initial call for papers on
the forum.  Since then, we've accepted a number of essays, but we could use
one or two more that have not been previously published.  A couple of
prospective publishers have expressed an interest in the book, but we came
up short in total number of pages.  Our proposal and table of contents are
below.  If you'd like to contribute, please let me know.  I'm heading out
on vacation tomorrow, but I'll be back at the end of the month to answer
questions.

Thanks!

Jim


Mark Twain Among the Scholars:
Reconsidering Contemporary Twain Criticism

edited by

Richard Hill and Jim McWilliams

Introduction

Contemporary critics have too often concerned themselves with various sub-
and extra-literary questions about Mark Twain--whether he practiced "bad
faith" in his work, whether he abdicated his social responsibility and
subverted his genius to the status quo of the Gilded Age, whether he was a
plagiarist, an opportunist, a racist, a sexist, an imperialist, a drunkard,
a psychopath, a homosexual, a pedophile-and so on to the latest scholarly
revelation.  We found that the more outrageous the claim about Twain or his
work the more recognition the author received, not only from academic
journals but from the mainstream press as well.  What was missing from much
of contemporary Twain criticism was a willingness to approach him without a
firm agenda in place.  Were there other scholars out there who also found
much of the current Twain criticism distasteful?  We decided to find out.
We searched journals, placed calls for papers in various publications, and
put out an Internet call via the Mark Twain Forum.  Subsequently, we put
together this collection of essays  that takes a skeptical look at many of
the current fads in Twain criticism.


Audience

This book will appeal to two audiences:

        1) Twain scholars and advanced college students who have been
involved                on one side or another of the debates generated by
New Historicist,                psychoanalytic, autobiographical, or other
modern critical approaches;

        2) College teachers and undergraduate students (as well as advanced
                high-school students) puzzled by the uncritical acceptance
in academia
of various critical assertions about Twain and his work.


Length

        Chapters: Ten essays at 15-35 manuscript pages each
        Book: Approximately 250 manuscript pages



Table of Contents


Introduction*
        Louis Budd

Introduction to The True Adventures of Huckleberry Finn**
        John Seelye                     1

Mark Twain and the New Americanists*
        Glen M. Johnson         20

Overreaching: Critical Agenda and the Ending of Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn***
        Richard Hill                    36

Personally Speaking: Mark Twain and the "Autobiographical Critic"*
        Harold K. Bush, Jr.             66

Mark Twain as He Is Taught: American Literature Anthologies, 1919-1998*
        Joseph Csicsila         86

Focused Too Well for Irony: Pudd'nhead Wilson and its Modern Critics**
        Henry B. Wonham         113

In His Own Time: The Early Academic Reception of Mark Twain*
        L. Terry Oggel          134

The Crowded Raft: Huckleberry Finn & Its Critics**
        J. C. Furnas                    152

How Many Children Had Huckleberry Finn?***
        Gary P. Henrickson              169


*Unpublished essay
**Previously published; reprint rights secured or pending
***Previous published but revised and updated

Jim McWilliams