In his autobiography, Mark Twain confesses that “from the cradle up I have been like the rest of the race—never quite sane in the night.” Of all the memories and fears that disturbed Twain’s peace of mind, none are more intractable than those associated with White fathers, Black men, the histories they reflect, and the future they promise. The Ghosts of Mark Twain: A Study of Manhood, Race, and the Gothic Imagination investigates these tense intersections in Twain’s life and work....

This groundbreaking volume explores the importance of economics and prosperity throughout Samuel Clemens’s writing and personal life.Mark Twain and Money: Language, Capital, and Culture focuses on an overlooked feature of the story of one of America’s most celebrated writers. Investigating Samuel Clemens’s often conflicting but insightful views on the roles of money in American culture and identity, this collection of essays shows how his fascination with ...

This broad-ranging companion brings together respected American and European critics and a number of up-and-coming scholars to provide an overview of Twain, his background, his writings, and his place in American literary history.One of the most broad-ranging volumes to appear on Mark Twain in recent yearsBrings together respected Twain critics and a number of younger scholars in the field to provide an overview of this central figure in American literature

“Powers brings to vivid life Twain's America...No biography of Mark Twain could do him full justice. Powers' comes as close as you can imagine." —Los Angeles TimesA magnificent and insightful biography of legendary writer Mark Twain and a great American story.Samuel Clemens, the man known as Mark Twain, invented the American voice and became one of our greatest celebrities. His life mirrored his country's, as he grew from a Mississ...

In 1773, the slave Phillis Wheatley literally wrote her way to freedom. The first person of African descent to publish a book of poems in English, she was emancipated by her owners in recognition of her literary achievement. For a time, Wheatley was the most famous black woman in the West. But Thomas Jefferson, unlike his contemporaries Ben Franklin and George Washington, refused to acknowledge her gifts as a writer -- a repudiation that eventually inspired generations of black writers to ...

A finalist for the 1972 National Book Award, hailed by The New York Times Book Review as "brilliant" and "provocative," Nathan Huggins' Harlem Renaissance was a milestone in the study of African-American life and culture. Now this classic history is being reissued, with a new foreword by acclaimed biographer Arnold Rampersad. As Rampersad notes, "Harlem Renaissance remains an indispensable guide to the facts and features, the puzzles and mysteries, of one of the ...

With the same intellectual incisiveness and supple, stylish prose he brought to his classic novel Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison examines his antecedents and in so doing illuminates the literature, music, and culture of both black and white America. His range is virtuosic, encompassing Mark Twain and Richard Wright, Mahalia Jackson and Charlie Parker, The Birth of a Nation and the Dante-esque landscape of Harlem−"the scene and symbol of the Negro's perpetual alienation in t...

A Dog's Tale' is a short story written by Mark Twain. It first appeared in the December 1903 issue of Harper's magazine. In January of the following year it was extracted into a stand-alone pamphlet published for the National Anti-Vivisection Society. Still later in 1904 it was expanded into a book published by Harper & Brothers. Excerpted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

**A New York Times Notable Book • Shortlisted for the Phi Beta Kappa Society's Christian Gauss Award for Outstanding Books in Literary Scholarship“Henry Louis Gates is a national treasure. Here, he returns with an intellectual and at times deeply personal meditation on the hard-fought evolution and the very meaning of African American identity, calling upon our country to transcend its manufactured divisions.” — Isabel Wilkerson, author of The Warmth of Other Suns...

Table of Contents:How to Tell a Story The Wounded Soldier The Golden Arm Mental Telegraphy Again The Invalid's StoryHow to Tell a Story and Other Essays (1895) is a series of essays by Mark Twain. In them he describes his own writing style, attacks the idiocy of a fellow author, defends the virtue of a dead woman, and tries to protect ordinary citizens from insults by railroad conductors.- Excerpted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

You're no idiot, of course. You know that Samuel Clemens had a better-known pen name, Moby Dick is a famous whale, and the Raven only said,"Nevermore." But when it comes to understanding the great works of Mark Twain, Herman Melville, and Edgar Allan Poe, you'd rather rent the videos than head to your local library. Don't tear up your library card yet! The Complete Idiot's Guide® to American Literature teaches you all about the rich tradition of American prose and poetry, so you c...

A genteel southern intellectual, saloniste, and wife to a prominent colonel in Jefferson Davis’s inner circle, Mary Chesnut today is remembered best for her penetrating Civil War diary. Composed between 1861 and 1865 and revised thoroughly from the late 1870s until Chesnut’s death in 1886, the diary was published first in 1905, again in 1949, and later, to great acclaim, in 1981. This complicated literary history and the questions that attend it—which edition represents the real Chesnut? T...