On 2nd thought, I decided to post short portions of my article on Twain and censorship hoping the editor, our own Kent Rasmussen, will not be offended. The full article appeared or will appear in Salem Press's *Ready Reference Guide to Censorship* and to them belongs any citations in your student's report. . . . Sex: Twain himself circulated some pieces privately, such as the bawdy parody "1601" (written in 1876), which was not officially published until 1987 although a number of unlicensed publishers released underground printings. As a Victorian male, Twain was uneasy about publishing overt sexual material in his works and, in such pieces as Villagers of 1840-43 (written 1897), he deliberately sentimentalized his Hannibal childhood, avoiding references to adultery and sexual practices he was clearly aware of. "The Mammoth Cod," an early twentieth-century scatological sketch has been attributed to Twain, and his 1879 speech on masturbation, "Some Thoughts on the Science of Onanism" delivered to the Stomach Club in Paris, was not printed until 1949 and then only as a pamphlet of fifteen copies. It did not appear in general circulation until 1964, first in Fact magazine, later in Playboy, when a typescript of the speech was located in the Mark Twain Papers, the original manuscript apparently not surviving. After Twain's death, his daughter Clara instructed Elizabeth Wallace, author of The Happy Island (1919), a short book about the author's meeting of Mark Twain in Bermuda, not to include potentially compromising photographs of Twain with young girls. While Twain's relationships with his "Angelfish" (young women who became Twain's surrogate daughters) were entirely above-board and fatherly, Clara believed readers might misconstrue Twain's affections. Philosophy of Literature: Throughout his life, Twain was interested in censorship, noting in Following the Equator that Americans have three "unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them." He observed the censorship of other authors, repeatedly decrying attackers of his philosophic mentor, American essayist Thomas Paine. He defended poet Walt Whitman while advising that Whitman's Leaves of Grass should be kept out of children's hands because of its sexual frankness. . . . Cheerio. wb