I tend to think backwards rather than forward, so I can't tell you what the most recent writings about Twain might be where he's treated as a suthrun writer, but I can tell you the earliest I have seen (in a book)-- Alexander De Menil's THE LITERATURE OF THE LOUISIANA TERRITORY (St. Louis, 1904). This is a survey of more than fifty writers connected in some way to Louisiana --Kate Chopin, Mollie Moore Davis, Edgar Howe, and of course Cable, Audubon, Flint, Benton, and a host of minor authors nobody would recognize. Curiously, he leaves out Hearn, Nye, Garland, and Kate Field. Twain gets a few pages, but De Menil puzzles over how Twain could be so popular, Twain being such a crude, unoriginal, commonplace writer, and concludes it might be because he amuses, but that his fame will not last. He also gets some facts of Twain's life wrong, and includes him because of Twain's connection with St Louis and steamboating (remember this is the La Terr., not the state) rather than a distinct southern influence on his writings. Kevin Mac Donnell Austin TX