So many web sites discuss Samuel Clemens or give extracts from his works
that it is clear he is still widely loved, not just dutifully studied. This
is a miscellaneous assortment of sites, many of which provide their own sets
of links:
|
www.twainquotes.com: Mark Twain Quotations, Newspaper
Collections, & Related Resources--A searchable site that offers
quotations organized by topic ("Every
time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail.") and
many of Twain's newspaper articles, including the one ("Sociable
Jimmy") that Shelley Fisher Fishkin cites in Was Huck Black?
Mark Twain and African American Voices (New York: Oxford UP,
1993). |
|
Mark
Twain, edited by Jim Zwick--This site offers many resources,
including a post-production interview with Ken Burns' co-producer on
the Mark Twain special, Dayton Duncan. There's also a list
of things people say Twain said but that he did not say. A
dead link to a Mark Twain site edited by Zwick on About.com
still appears on many lists; presumably this is a new version. (See
below for Zwick's Mark Twain on War and Imperialism.) |
| The
Mark Twain House in Hartford, Conn., is featured in the Ken
Burns special. It's now a museum, and its site includes a
virtual tour of the house and a
free sample lesson
plan to download in .pdf format. (The sample, which deals with
writing a descriptive essay, is part of a unit that is available for
purchase.) |
| The
Mark Twain Papers & Project at the library of the University
of California, Berkeley includes either originals or photocopies of
all or nearly all of Twain's papers and those of his family. Its
online exhibitions deal with Twain's comments on art and his
travels. Other resources accessible by Internet include a set of
cased photographs (mostly of Olivia Langdon Clemens and her family,
but photographs of Twain and of Orion Clemens are also included) and
a searchable database of letters to and from Clemens. In addition,
an article about a
new edition of Huckleberry Finn in Berkeleyan Online
gives some insight into the sources scholarly editors use and some
of the discoveries they make. |
|
Mark
Twain in His Times Among other good things on this site,
there is a "Memory Builder" game (based on a game Clemens himself
invented) that will help one review (or learn about) the author's
life and times. |
| Welcome to
Hannibal, Missouri! uses Twain connections to promote
Hannibal tourism, but the town's undeniable connection with Tom
Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn makes the site's pictures
very interesting. |
Twain E-texts at the University of Virginia are listed
here.
Life on the Mississippi is well worth reading in its own
right, but it also provides useful background information for
Huckleberry Finn. For example, the third chapter's
description of the kind of raft Huck and Jim have found (theirs
is a small one) clarifies something the novel doesn't fully explain:
In the heyday of the steamboating prosperity, the river from
end to end was flaked with coal-fleets and timber rafts, all
managed by hand, and employing hosts of the rough characters
whom I have been trying to describe. I remember the annual
processions of mighty rafts that used to glide by Hannibal when
I was a boy, -- an acre or so of white, sweet-smelling boards in
each raft, a crew of two dozen men or more, three or four
wigwams scattered about the raft's vast level space for
storm-quarters, -- and I remember the rude ways and the
tremendous talk of their big crews, the ex-keelboatmen and their
admiringly patterning successors; for we used to swim out a
quarter or third of a mile and get on these rafts and have a
ride.
|
|
Mark Twain on War and Imperialism is another Jim
Zwick site that appears in a number dead links, presumably because
it has moved. Some of Twain's comments still have the power to make
American readers very uncomfortable. |
|
Samuel
Mark Twain
Clemens:
Known to Everyone, Liked by All
This interesting site is meant to go with Ken Burns' video on
Mark Twain. |
|
About Mark
Twain (not part of About.com) has a link to extracts from
"Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven," one of Clemens' funnier
efforts. (It describes a visit to a heaven that is "as blissful and
lovely as it can be" but not at all what the visitor has expected.) |
|
Elmira College Lecture Archive Clemens had close
connections with Elmira (both the college and the town), and there
are a number of lectures archived here that will be of interest to
anyone researching Clemens and his works. |
