Mark Twain’s Literary Resources: A Reconstruction of His Library and Reading, Vol. 1

This labor of love from Gribben (Harry Huntt Ransom), an Auburn University English professor, meticulously chronicles Mark Twain’s library and literary influences. Gribben debunks Twain’s self-created image of reluctant and infrequent reader. It partly originated, Gribbens opines, in Twain’s own insecurity about his lack of formal education. On the contrary, Gribben’s detective work illustrates, Twain read widely and voraciously, from the classics to contemporary authors. This book, the first installment of three, comprises a series of essays, many previously published, on what is known about Twain’s (no longer intact) library. For example, Gribbens identifies the specific version of Robin Hood—an 1841 retelling—quoted in Tom Sawyer. Some essays will appeal to the general reader, such as one about Twain’s deliciously wicked “Library of Literary Hogwash,” which included Love Among the Mistletoe, which Twain called “hogwash, but not atrocious enough to be first-rate,” and a biography of Edgar Allan Poe whose author Twain pronounced “the most remarkable animal that ever cavorted around a poet’s grave.” Twain scholars and specialists in related fields, such as childhood literature, will profit most from this scrupulously researched, highly specialized volume. (Mar.)