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February 2, 2009
The Mark Twain Project
One of my abnormal interests is Mark Twain. I don't write about him all that much because even pretending to keep up with the secondary literature in any one field is nearly impossible and I have recently focused more on a few other abnormal interests. The secondary literature on Mark Twain is immense and growing. For some time it has been nearly unmanageable even for professionals. In part, this is because the primary material is also immense. Most of us can list several of his books, some know a few of his many newspaper and magazine articles, but even fewer know much about any of the estimated fifty thousands of letters he wrote.
Over the years, the Bancroft Library on the UC Berkeley Campus has been collecting this primary material and placing large portions of it in a publically available database. The online collection now documents over ten thousand letters. The full text of over 2000 letters is available, many with extensive comments, and one can read 84 letters online in Mark Twain's own hand. The database seems to grow daily. The search tools are quite good.
I bring all this up because the Mark Twain Project has recently moved into new greatly enlarged digs at Bancroft.
I rather like this little gem from a July 19, letter to Joseph H. Twichell,
I am writing with a stylographic pen. It takes a royal amount of cussing to make the thing go, the first few days or weeks; but by that time the dullest ass gets the hang of the thing, & after that no enrichments of expression are required & said ass finds the stylographic a genuine God’s blessing. I carry one in each breeches pocket, & both loaded. I’d give you one of them if I had you where I could teach you how to use it—not otherwise; for the average ass flings the thing out of the window in disgust, the second day, believing it hath no virtue nor merit of any sort, whereas the lack lieth in himself, God of his mercy damn him.
Search around and see what you can find.
Posted by Duane Smith at February 2, 2009 3:22 PM | Read more on Mark Twain |
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