The Letters of Mark Twain and Joseph Hopkins Twichell [Hardcover]

HAROLD K. BUSH is a professor English at Saint Louis University and the author of three books, including Mark Twain and the Spiritual Crisis of His Age.
PETER MESSENT is the emeritus professor of modern American literature at the University of Nottingham and the author several books, including Mark Twain and Male Friendship: The Twichell, Howells, and Rogers Friendships.
STEVE COURTNEY is the publicist and publications editor of the Mark Twain House. He is the author of Joseph Hopkins Twichell: The Life and Times of Mark Twain’s Closest Friend and the coeditor (with Peter Messent) of The Civil War Letters of Joseph Hopkins Twichell: A Chaplain’s Story (both Georgia).

This book contains the complete texts of all known correspondence between Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain) and Joseph Hopkins Twichell. Theirs was a rich exchange. The long, deep friendship of Clemens and Twichell—a Congregationalist minister of Hartford, Connecticut—rarely fails to surprise, given the general reputation Twain has of being antireligious. Beyond this, an examination of the growth, development, and shared interests characterizing that friendship makes it evident that as in most things about him, Mark Twain defies such easy categorization or judgment.

From the moment of their first encounter in 1868, a rapport was established. When Twain went to dinner at the Twichell home, he wrote to his future wife that he had ???got up to go at 9.30 PM, & never sat down again—but [Twichell] said he was bound to have his talk out—& I was willing—& so I only left at 11.??? This conversation continued, in various forms, for forty-two years—in both men’s houses, on Hartford streets, on Bermuda roads, and on Alpine trails.

The dialogue between these two men—one an inimitable American lóS