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The greatest bibliographer of our time, was how historian Robert Darnton described D. F. McKenzie. Yet until now many of McKenzie's major essays, scattered in specialist journals and inaccessible publications, have circulated mainly in tattered photocopies. This volume, edited by two of McKenzie's former students, brings together for the first time a wide range of his writings on bibliography, the book trade, and the “sociology of texts.” Selected by the author himself before his sudden death in 1999, the essays range from the material transmission of Shakespeare's plays in the seventeenth century to the connections among oral, manuscript, and print cultures. 

Making Meaning reflects McKenzie's virtuosity as a traditional bibliographer and reveals how his thought-provoking scholarship made him a driving force in the genesis and development of the new interdisciplinary field of book history. His refusal to recognize the traditional boundary between bibliography and literary history re-energized the study of the social, political, economic, and cultural aspects of book production and reception. 

The editors' introduction and headnotes situate McKenzie's innovative and controversial thinking in the debates of his time.

Awarded the Nobel Prize in 2010 at the age of seventy-four, Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa has held pivotal roles in the evolution and revolutions of modern Latin American literature. Perhaps surprisingly, no complete history of Vargas Llosa’s works, placed in biographical and historical context, has been published—until now. A masterwork from one of America’s most revered scholars of Latin American fiction, Mario Vargas Llosa: A Life of Writing provides a critical overview of Vargas Llosa’s numerous novels while reinvigorating debates regarding conventional interpretations of the work.

Weaving analysis with discussions of the writer’s political commentary, Raymond Leslie Williams traces the author’s youthful identity as a leftist student of the 1960s to a repudiation of some of his earlier ideas beginning in the 1980s. Providing a unique perspective on the complexity, nuance, and scope of Vargas Llosa’s lauded early novels and on his passionate support of indigenous populations in his homeland, Williams then turns his eye to the recent works, which serve as a bridge between the legacies of the Boom and the diverse array of contemporary Latin American fiction writers at work today. In addition, Williams provides a detailed description of Vargas Llosa’s traumatic childhood and its impact on him—seen particularly in his lifelong disdain for authority figures—as well as of the authors who influenced his approach, from Faulkner to Flaubert. Culminating in reflections drawn from Williams’s formal interviews and casual conversations with the author at key phases of both men’s careers, this is a landmark publication that will spark new lines of inquiry into an intricate body of work.

One became America’s greatest writer. The other died in obscurity and failure. As brothers, they shaped each other's lives and work.

In a compelling way, Philip Fanning traces the fraternal relationship of Orion and Samuel Clemens from its beginning in Hannibal, Missouri, in the 1830s to Orion's death in Iowa in 1897. He demonstrates that Orion’s influence on the writer known as Mark Twain was profound, pervasive, and prolonged.

In some respects, Samuel defined himself against Orion’s formidable background. It was Orion who became the chief financial and spiritual support of the Clemens family following the father's controversial death in 1847. It was Orion who led the way for his brother into printing, journalism, and mine speculation. And it was Orion who served as Sam’s first real editor and literary mentor, recognizing and encouraging his younger brother’s talents as a writer.

The two siblings had much in common, and they often appeared to be codependent, so much so that their attitudes veered sharply from mutual admiration to mutual disdain and rivalry. Whereas Orion was self-effacing, easygoing, humble, and adventurous in his politics and progressive in his views, Twain was often ill-tempered and antagonistic toward those around him and conservative in his outlook. He frequently portrayed his older brother in autobiographical writings and letters as a buffoon and a laughingstock.

Fanning—who drew upon extensive archival sources, unpublished letters between the two brothers, and the Mark Twain Papers at the University of California, Berkeley—charts these divergences in their characters and in their fortunes. As Twain rose to become a national celebrity and a financial success, Orion's finances and self-esteem disintegrated, and Twain’s treatment of his brother became evermore harsh and mocking. Fanning’s study stands as both a biography of a fractious fraternal relationship and a work of scholarship that highlights for the first time how significantly Orion Clemens influenced Twain’s psychic and artistic economy.
 

Discover the spiritual depths behind America’s greatest humorist.

Mark Twain is often pictured as a severe critic of religious piety, shaking his fist at God and mocking the devout. Such a view, however, is only partly correct. It ignores the social realities of Twain’s major period as a writer and his own spiritual interests: his participation in church activities, his socially progressive agenda, his reliance on religious themes in his major works, and his friendships with clergymen, especially his pastor and best friend, Joe Twichell. It also betrays a conception of religion that is more contemporary than that of the period in which he lived.

Harold K. Bush Jr. highlights Twain’s attractions to and engagements with the wide variety of religious phenomena of America in his lifetime, and how these matters affected his writings. Though Twain lived in an era of tremendous religious vigor, it was also a time of spiritual upheaval and crisis. The rise of biological and psychological sciences, the criticism of biblical texts as literary documents, the influx of world religions and immigrant communities, and the trauma of the Civil War all had dramatic effects on America’s religious life. At the same time mass urban revivalism, the ecumenical movement, Social Christianity, and occultic phenomena, like spiritualism and mind sciences, all rushed in to fill the voids. The rapid growth of agnosticism in the 1870s and 1880s is also clearly reflected in Twain’s life and writings. Thus Twain’s career reflects in an unusually resonant way the vast changes in American belief during his lifetime.

Bush’s study offers both a new and more complicated understanding of Twain and his literary output and serves as the cultural biography of an era.

Many biographies of Mark Twain cover his entire life, while others focus on specific periods, especially his later years. In this innovative new work, John Bird takes an entirely different approach. Mark Twain’s 1884: A Pivotal Year in the Life is a “micro-biography” that homes in on a single—and pivotal—year. 

In 1884, Twain stood at the height of his powers as a writer and enjoyed one of the happiest years in his domestic family life. During the course of the year he was readying his greatest work, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, for publication, which occurred in England near the end of the year; he was launching his own publishing house, Charles L. Webster and Company, after becoming disillusioned with his previous publishers; and he publicly embroiled himself in presidential politics in a way that presaged his later involvement with American and international politics. Finally, Twain’s 1884 ended with a great deal more public exposure thanks to an extensive multi-city lecture tour he undertook with George Washington Cable, as well as the beginnings of his ultimately successful attempt to secure publishing rights for Ulysses S. Grant’s memoirs.

The level of detail provided by a day-to-day narrative gives the reader a chance to imaginatively live that year in Twain’s life: his work, his family life, his correspondence, his business dealings, his travels, his recreational pursuits, and his political involvement. Bird enlarges upon a great many moments in and aspects of Twain’s life that other biographies barely touch on or ignore completely. 

In this new approach to biography, Bird gives readers a broader appreciation not only of Mark Twain the author but of Mark Twain the husband, father, uncle, and friend, and national celebrity and persona.
 

After laughing their way through his classic and beloved depictions of nineteenth-century American life, few readers would suspect that Mark Twain’s last years were anything but happy and joyful. They would be wrong. Contrary to the myth perpetrated by his literary executors Twain ended his life as a frustrated writer plagued by paranoia. He suffered personal tragedies, got involved in questionable business ventures, and was a demanding and controlling father and husband.  As Mark Twain: God’s Fool demonstrates, the difficult circumstances of Twain’s personal life make his humorous output all the more surprising and admirable.  

 “Ham[lin] Hill remains among the smartest, most honest, and most humane of Twain scholars—and . . . God’s Fool parades those qualities on every page.”   Jeff Steinbrink, Franklin & Marshall College

“Fills a great, long-standing need for a thoroughly researched book about Mark Twain’s twilight years. . . . Splendidly, grippingly written and excellently documented. . . . Likely to be a standard work for as long as anyone can foresee.”   Choice

This scathing, at times humorous, and always insightful memoir by exiled Hungarian novelist Sándor Márai, provides one of the most poignant and human portraits of life in Hungary between the German occupation in 1944 and the solidification of communist power in 1948. Both a fervent anti-fascist and anti-communist, Márai draws a vivid portrait of the Hungarian peasantry and middle-class during this period, while delivering a telling indictment of the communist system from which he fled. Witty, aphoristic and psychologically clear-sighted, this memoir depicts the tragedy and pathos of a crucial period in the post-war history of a nation which has been 'central' to both the communists and the post-communist history of our times.

Henry David Thoreau was a twenty-year-old scholarship student at Harvard when he met Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1837. Emerson, fourteen years Thoreau's senior and independently wealthy, had recently shaken the intellectual world of New England with the publication of Nature. Despite the disparity in their circumstances, Thoreau and Emerson quickly formed a close relationship that lasted until Thoreau's death at the age of forty-four. This book tells the story of their friendship. Harmon Smith emphasizes their personal bond, but also shows how their relationship affected their thought and writing, and was in turn influenced by their careers.

Without Emerson's interest and support, it is unlikely that Thoreau could have expended the energy on writing that enabled him to achieve greatness. By inviting Thoreau into his home to live during two different periods in the 1840s, Emerson effectively made Thoreau “one of the family.” He provided him with work, lent him money, and allowed him to build a cabin on the shore of Walden Pond. Emerson also broadened Thoreau's horizon immeasurably by introducing him to an ever-widening circle of friends and colleagues.

Although the bond between Thoreau and Emerson was strong, their needs were often greatly at variance. While this led to a prolonged period of estrangement between them, they were ultimately able to reconcile their differences. Many years after Thoreau died, Emerson could look back over his long life and say that Henry had been his best friend. Since the thoughts and feelings of the two men are so well documented in their journals and letters, Smith is able to trace the pattern of their emotional involvement in great detail. What emerges is both a remarkable portrait of their relationship and an intimate look at the nature of friendship itself.

In Myself and Strangers, John Graves, the highly regarded author of Goodbye to a River and other classic works, recalls the decade-long apprenticeship in which he found his voice as a writer. He recounts his wanderings from Texas to Mexico, New York, and Spain, where, like Hemingway, he hoped to find the material with which to write books that mattered. With characteristic honesty, Graves admits the false starts and dead ends that dogged much of his writing, along with the exhilaration he felt when the words finally flowed. He frankly describes both the pleasures and the restlessness of expatriate life in Europe after World War II—as well as his surprising discovery, when family obligations eventually called him home to Texas, that the years away had prepared him to embrace his native land as the fit subject matter for his writing. For anyone seeking the springs that fed John Graves' best-loved books, this memoir of apprenticeship will be genuinely rewarding.