Here's a nice video about the new Twain autobiography, featuring the editors at the Bancroft:

Fact #1. Mark Twain is a profoundly bad poet.

Fact #2. Mark Twain is always capable of saying something inappropriate. Always.

These facts have been brought to you by the Bancroft Library's Mark Twain Papers.

"[H]e said this in joke, but I've no dought [sic] it was founded on truth."
    --Susy Clemens, aged fourteen, writing of her father Mark Twain something that could be applied to almost all of his utterances.

Clemens, Olivia Susan. Untitled biography of Mark Twain. Published as Papa: An Intimate Biography of Mark Twain, by Susy Clemens, New York: Doubleday, 1985, Print. MS at University of Virginia Barrett Collection. MS copy at Bancroft Library.

What is a girl author?

Planning to do research is almost as satisfying as actually doing it. I'll be doing a little research at the Bancroft Library this summer, on Mark Twain and his very dubious notions of girlhood. (This has not gone uncommented in the scholarship by any means, but I'll be focusing in particular on the notion of girl authorship with respect to Twain's daughter Susy, in contrast with, for instance, Emmeline Grangerford). Twain is one of those straight-talkers who can never, in fact, be taken straight. I'm looking forward to getting started on this project. But first I need to finish the one I'm currently doing! On we go.