A New Orleans Author in Mark Twain's Court: Letters from Grace King's New England Sojourns ed. by Miki Pfeffer

Abstract

Reviewed by: A New Orleans Author in Mark Twain's Court: Letters from Grace King's New England Sojournsed. by Miki Pfeffer Jane Turner Censer A New Orleans Author in Mark Twain's Court: Letters from Grace King's New England Sojourns. Edited by Miki Pfeffer. The Hill Collection: Holdings of the LSU Libraries. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2019. Pp. xxiv, 304. $55.00, ISBN 978-0-8071-6973-5.) Although this volume's title, A New Orleans Author in Mark Twain's Court, mentions an important focus, its subtitle, Letters from Grace King's New England Sojourns, gives a fuller indication of its contents. These letters by Grace King, a New Orleans author renowned for her portrayals of Louisiana creole culture in novels and short stories, show her long friendship with the Clemens family, including Samuel (who wrote as Mark Twain), his wife, Olivia, and daughters. The letters go beyond that friendship to an excellent account of King's important relationships with northern intellectuals; they also detail well her entry into the publishing world. In 1885 Grace King was an unmarried but well-educated thirty-three-year-old woman of good family with few prospects when, through the World's Industrial and Cotton Exposition in New Orleans, she first met famous Boston poet Julia Ward Howe and northern editors Charles Dudley Warner and Richard Watson Gilder. In revitalizing a New Orleans literary society that King joined, Howe provided an important initial support group. More important, through Howe, King was able to catch the interest of Warner, editor of the Hartford, Connecticut, Courantand part of the editorial staff at Harper's Monthly Magazine. Warner, then in his fifties, very much enjoyed the attentions of King, who was flattering, flirtatious, and witty. He helped shepherd her stories to publication in Harper's; even more important, Warner and his wife, Susan, encouraged King to visit them in Hartford. Through them she met his neighbors, the Clemenses, as well as Frederic E. Church, the celebrated landscape painter, and his wife. King's long sojourns in the North in 1887, 1888, and 1891, as well her European visits in 1892 with the Clemens family, form the bulk of the letters presented. Even though Grace King undoubtedly enjoyed her northern trips, she, as one who had lived through the Civil War and still believed in the superior virtues of white southerners, cast a wary eye at the northerners she encountered. During the 1888 elections, when she was in Hartford as a guest in a Republican family, she wrote her sister, "How I loathe, despise and hate the Republicans!" (p. 135). Over time, after a disagreement with the Warners, King resorted to sectional explanations as she described her relationship with Susan Warner: "She is rather trying as I found, but Northern people are so queer" (p. 102). Certainly King in her visits to the North was at first expecting her acquaintances there to provide material or career advantages, as is apparent in a letter to her sister: "I feel that I may be put in the way of doing some well paid work, by frequenting these masters of literature" (p. 95). Over time, however, King came to care deeply for the Clemens family, especially Olivia Clemens. [End Page 928] The letters in this book are drawn primarily from either the voluminous collections of King family papers at Louisiana State University or the Mark Twain Papers at the University of California at Berkeley. Editor Miki Pfeffer presents them well, with minimal editorial changes and helpful introductions and annotations. Pfeffer often uses partial letters and even excerpts, a practice decried by some historical editors, but made necessary in this case by the number and length of the letters with which she is dealing. A New Orleans Author in Mark Twain's Courtis fascinating reading. While adding to our understanding of Grace King's entry into publishing and her career, this edition of letters also provides many useful insights into the cultural, intellectual, and literary life of late-nineteenth-century America. Jane Turner Censer George Mason University Copyright © 2020 Southern Historical Association