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Reminiscences of Howells' friendship with Mark Twain, followed by criticism of about a dozen of his major works (chiefly book reviews previously published in various periodicals).

For more than forty years William Dean Howells counted Mark Twain among his closest friends. Howells knew all the great men of American literature during the last half of the nineteenth century. In his acquaintance were Longfellow, Emerson, Lowell, Holmes, and a long list of other sages, poets, novelists, and critics. “They were like on another and like other literary men,” Howells wrote, “but Clemens was sole, incomparable, the Lincoln of our literature.” Mark Twin’s death on April 21, 1910, moved Howells to record his memories of the man he felt “pervaded” the era “almost more than any other man of letters.” His reminiscences were published in Harper’s Monthly and subsequently put into book form along with twelve pieces of Howells’ criticism of Mark Twain’s work. This is the first new edition of the book since the original printing in 1910. Both the sketch and the essays have been annotated to give the reader a full appreciation of Mark Twain’s growth as a writer and Howells’ increasing awareness of his friends’ greatness. The notes identify and explain the literary issues, the people, places, and events to which Howells alludes. The long friendship between Howells and Mark Twain fostered innumerable visits, extensive correspondence, joint literary projects, and often humorous escapades. To a great degree Howells identified with Clemens. Both men were of midwestern origin and came from similar backgrounds. They encountered literary Boston together. Both experienced domestic tragedy. The immediacy of My Mark Twain affords the reader a rare and intimate picture of Mark Twain and indirectly, of Howells.

My Mark Twain (from Literary Friends and Acquaintance) by William Dean Howells is a rare manuscript, the original residing in some of the great libraries of the world. This book is a reproduction of that original, typed out and formatted to perfection, allowing new generations to enjoy the work. Publishers of the Valley's mission is to bring long out of print manuscripts back to life.

In the spring of 1884 Ulysses S. Grant heeded the advice of Mark Twain and finally agreed to write his memoirs. Little did Grant or Twain realize that this seemingly straightforward decision would profoundly alter not only both their lives but the course of American literature. Over the next fifteen months, as the two men became close friends and intimate collaborators, Grant raced against the spread of cancer to compose a triumphant account of his life and times—while Twain struggled to complete and publish his greatest novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.In this deeply moving and meticulously researched book, veteran writer Mark Perry reconstructs the heady months when Grant and Twain inspired and cajoled each other to create two quintessentially American masterpieces. In a bold and colorful narrative, Perry recounts the early careers of these two giants, traces their quest for fame and elusive fortunes, and then follows the series of events that brought them together as friends. The reason Grant let Twain talk him into writing his memoirs was simple: He was bankrupt and needed the money. Twain promised Grant princely returns in exchange for the right to edit and publish the book—and though the writer’s own finances were tottering, he kept his word to the general and his family. Mortally ill and battling debts, magazine editors, and a constant crush of reporters, Grant fought bravely to get the story of his life and his Civil War victories down on paper. Twain, meanwhile, staked all his hopes, both financial and literary, on the tale of a ragged boy and a runaway slave that he had been unable to finish for decades. As Perry delves into the story of the men’s deepening friendship and mutual influence, he arrives at the startling discovery of the true model for the character of Huckleberry Finn. With a cast of fascinating characters, including General William T. Sherman, William Dean Howells, William Henry Vanderbilt, and Abraham Lincoln, Perry’s narrative takes in the whole sweep of a glittering, unscrupulous age. A story of friendship and history, inspiration and desperation, genius and ruin, Grant and Twain captures a pivotal moment in the lives of two towering Americans and the age they epitomized.

Mr. William Dean Howells has written many books of several kinds which have entertained a great many people of all kinds, but no single book of any kind in which his various talents appear to such advantage to themselves and enjoyment of their readers as in his 'Literary Friends and Acquaintance', which, briefly described as a personal retrospect of American authorship, is in reality a series of portraits and miniatures of American men, women and, figuratively, in some cases, children of the pen, a gallery of literary likenesses, drawn from life, with a skillful but kindly pencil, and in the light that lingers like a halo around their lessening memories. Mr. Howells divides his retrospects into eight parts, and being personal they are in a sense chronological — successive records of his autorial career, the steps of his journeys into the domain of authorship, and his impressions of certain of their inhabitants, of their individualities — their work, or play, or whatever else seemed to distinguish them at the moment from the profane or vulgar, who did not write for fame, or scribble for bread. The headings of these parts, or chapters, are indications of these journeys, which were eastward, Mr. Howells' course of empire reversing that of Bishop Berkeley, which took its way westward, the first being entitled '"My First Visit to New England," the second "First Impressions of Literary New York," the third and fourth "Roundabout to Boston" and "Literary Boston as I Knew It," and so on through separate personal chapters devoted to Holmes, Longfellow and Lowell, the last being a gathering-in of Mr. Howells' "Cambridge Neighbors."

Reproduction of the original: Literary Friends and Acquaintances by William Dean Howells