Abstract
Sholom J. Kahn. Mark Twain's "Mysterious Stranger": 4 Studv of the Manuscripts. Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri Press, 1978, 252 + xix pp. William R. Maenaughton. Mark Twain's Last Years as a Writer. Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri Press, 1979, 254 + x pp. David E. E. Sloane. Mark Twain as a Literary Comedian. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979. 221 + xi pp. These three new books on Mark Twain are of varying quality, but none is essential to anyone but the Twain specialist. To be fair, none of them pretends to be more—their titles announce their modest ambitions. Only Sloane deals with major works, although Kahn does his best to persuade us that The Mysterious Stranger is a major work. New material steadily accumulates as unpublished manuscripts appear in print, and special studies multiply, but the work of synthesis remains undone. Instead, Twain scholars still rely on, or set out to refute, the established interpretations of Brooks, of De Voto, of Smith.
Published Version
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