I don't know if anyone has yet pointed this out, but Sam Clemens adopted Mark Twain as a pen name for pieces of a humorous nature. And there already was a long-standing literary tradition in England, the United States and many other countries for humorists to use pen names. Charles Dickens' earliest works of fiction, most of a humorist nature, were published under the pen name of Boz. So were the first two books, "Sketches by Boz" and "The Pickwick Papers." It wasn't until the third book, "Oliver Twist," that he relinquished the pen name. By then, his own real name was as well known and he was tackling increasingly serious themes with an actual novel (although there remained great affection for the Inimitable Boz). On this side of the pond, Washington Irving presented his highly satirical "History of New York" as the work of one Diedrich Knickerbocker, and "The Sketch Book" (inlcuding both "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow") as the tales of Geoffrey Crayon. Long before Twain, Jean-Baptiste Poquelin wrote his comedies and acted in France under the name of Moliere. During Twain's lifetime, Anton Chekhov wrote his early sketches for Russian journals under the pen name of Antosha Chekhonte. The custom by Twain's day in America was for humorists to write under pen names. That certainly was the case with the humorists Twain knew and admired. So Charles Farrar Browne (a Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist, no less!) became Artemus Ward. William Wright became Dan De Quille. Henry Wheeler Shaw became Josh Billings. David Ross Locke became Petroleum V. Nasby. And Samuel Langhorne Clemens became Mark Twain. But while Dickens could toss Boz aside, Twain had no such luck when he turned to increasingly serious topics. He wanted to publish "Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc" under his own name (thinking it his most serious work of literature), but he was so much better known to the public as Mark Twain, that was the name put on the cover by Harper & Brothers. All best, Marcus de Bilgewater Dawidziak