Mark Twain and the Minister

The long-awaited edition of Samuel L. Clemens's correspondence with his closest friend—the Rev. Joseph Hopkins Twichell of Hartford—is due out in Spring 2017 from the University of Georgia Press, under the editorship of Harold K. Bush, Peter Messent, and Steve Courtney. The volume—The Letters of Mark Twain and Joseph Hopkins Twichell—is due in part to the extraordinary generosity of Robert H. Hirst and the Bancroft Library at the University of California for making available, and preparing for first publication in print, the post-1880 Clemens side of the correspondence. In May, Steve Courtney gave a version of the following to the Luncheon Club, a group of donors to the Mark Twain Papers and Project in Berkeley.