Bob Sutton wrote: > On the subject of 1601, I think Mark Twain acknowledged that he > wrote it. "In the summer of 1876, Mark Twain began studying 16th-century English history to prepare for writing the _The Prince and the Pauper_. ... He wrote 1601 to experiment with Elizabethan dialogue and to amuse his friend Joseph Twichell. ... With Mark Twain's approval, [in 1882, Erskine Scott] Wood altered spellings to reflect late-16th-century forms [and] set the text in old-fashioned type ... In the absence of an authoritative text, punctuation and spellings have varied greatly ... Mark Twain never publicly admitted authorship of 1601." _Mark Twain A to Z_, pp. 430-31. _M. T. A to Z_ and _The M. T. Encyclopedia_ are excellent starting points for factual questions. thanks, larry marshburne [log in to unmask]