Mark Twain & Company

Six Literary Relations

Title Details

Pages: 328

Trim size: 6.000in x 9.000in

Formats

Hardcover

Pub Date: 10/27/2003

ISBN: 9-780-8203-2540-8

List Price: $50.95

Mark Twain & Company

Six Literary Relations

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  • Description
  • Reviews

In this comparison of Mark Twain with six of his literary contemporaries, Leland Krauth looks anew at the writer's multifaceted creativity. Twain, a highly lettered man immersed in the literary culture of his time, viewed himself as working within a community of writers. He likened himself to a guild member whose work was the crafted product of a common trade—and sometimes made with borrowed materials.

Yet there have been few studies of Twain in relation to his fellow guild members. In Mark Twain & Company, Krauth examines some creative "sparks and smolderings" ignited by Twain's contact with certain writers, all of whom were published, read, and criticized on both sides of the Atlantic: the Americans Bret Harte, William Dean Howells, and Harriet Beecher Stowe and the British writers Matthew Arnold, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Rudyard Kipling.

Each chapter explores the nature of Twain's personal relationship with a writer as well as the literary themes and modes they shared. Krauth looks at the sentimentality of Harte and Twain and its influence on their protest fiction; the humor and social criticism of Twain and Howells; the use of the Gothic by Twain and Stowe to explore racial issues; the role of Victorian Sage assumed by Arnold and Twain to critique civilization; the exploitation of adventure fiction by Twain and Stevenson to reveal conceptions of masculinity; and the use of the picaresque in Kipling and Twain to support or subvert imperialism.

Mark Twain & Company casts new light on some of the most enduring writers in English. At the same time it refreshes the debate over the transatlantic nature of Victorianism with new insights about nineteenth-century morality, conventionality, race, corporeality, imperialism, manhood, and individual identity.

This rich and learned book is incapable of advancing an idea that isn't surprising, sensitive, and right. Written with a deep assurance and steady wit, the book also maintains a sweet-hearted regard for the reader, making it as fun to read as Twain himself. This is the most capacious and important book on Twain to appear in many decades.

—James R. Kincaid, University of Southern California

A significant contribution to Mark Twain studies and to our knowledge of themes current in nineteenth-century literature in general. On the ‘personal’ side Krauth invariably introduces little-known details. On the ‘literary’ side, as he compares and contrasts specific works, his observations concerning each author's treatment of certain themes are truly insightful. And among other excellences Krauth's lively style makes the work a real pleasure to read.

—Howard G. Baetzhold, Butler University

While intending primarily to enrich our perspectives on Mark Twain's writings (and succeeding), Krauth raises Twain's intellectual as well as his artistic stature still higher. Conducting comparisons without making comparative judgments, Krauth examines some of Twain's major contemporaries to refresh, realign, and expand our insights into his work. This is a keen-minded yet appreciative, highly readable yet penetrating, widely learned yet reader-friendly book.

—Louis J. Budd, Duke University

Krauth's clearly written book displays Twain as a professional writer and humorist in an international setting and reveals him as a mature, world-class, and unique writer.

Choice

Krauth has the rare ability to write for both the masses (at least the Twainiac masses) and an academic audience. The book is extremely well-researched and eminently readable. It breaks ground, I think, in fusing Twain with the establishment of cross-cultural Victorian studies, and it does so with a flair often absent in academic writing.

—Jeffrey W. Miller, Mark Twain Forum

Krauth brings to light Twain's ingenious, and often subtle, depictions and criticisms of gender, Victorian morality, and American imperialism, among other matters. . . . He does not fashion a new image of Twain, but rather adds complexities to the standard image so that this paradigmatic and in some ways revolutionary American author 'continues to elude exact critical focus.'

University Press Book Review

A solid and lasting contribution to Twain studies. Original in conception and insightful in execution, Mark Twain & Company sheds provocative cross-lights on Mark Twain and the literary guild he belonged to.

—Tom V. Quirk, author of Mark Twain: A Study of the Short Fiction

A fascinating account . . . Krauth makes it clear that his purpose is not to examine the life and works of Mark Twain 'in the borad field of some particular literary fashion or movement, but in the narrower corridor of his personal acquaintanceship.' . . . He accomplishes this goal convincingly and compellingly.

Southern Review

About the Author/Editor

LELAND KRAUTH is an associate professor of English at the University of Colorado at Boulder.