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Winner of the 2010 American Studies Network Book Prize
Mark Twain and Male Friendship
The Twichell, Howells, and Rogers Friendships
Peter Messent
270 pages
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black and white halftone inserts - 8pp plates
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235x154mm
978-0-19-539116-9
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Hardback
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12 November 2009
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This item will be ordered from OUP USA. Items ordered from OUP USA are despatched and charged as soon as we receive them, which is normally within 2 weeks
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- Penned in accessible prose by a Twain scholar with a considerable international reputation.
- Publication will coincide with events surrounding centenary of Twain's death, which will be commemorated in 2010.
- Will appeal across several subfields: American Studies, masculinity and gender role studies, biographical interest, cultural studies, late nineteenth-century historical and literary study, Mark Twain studies.
- Features thirteen rare and hard-to-find photos of Twain.
Combining biography, literary history, and gender studies, Mark Twain and Male Friendship examines three profoundly influential and vastly different friendships in the life of the author of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. With accessible prose informed by extensive research, the study begins by exploring the relationship between Mark Twain and his pastor Joseph Twichell, highlighting the latter's role as mentor and spiritual advisor as a way to explore the great author's conflicted religious beliefs. Messent then shifts gears to consider fellow author and sometime rival William Dean Howells who serves as a prism through which to spotlight the literary
marketplace of 19th-century America and reveal Twain's competitive streak. A third unlikely friendship between Twain and Standard Oil robber baron H.H. Rogers illuminates Twain's attitude toward business and explores how Rogers and his wife served as a surrogate family for the novelist after the death of his own wife. Throughout, Messent uses the existing work on male friendship and gender roles as a springboard to place these friendships in terms of changing conceptions of masculinity and of men's roles both in marriage and in the larger social networks of their time. He also considers the friendships against a larger ideological backdrop in which the status of these four men-as socially privileged white males-very much conditioned both the form of the friendships and the way they
functioned. Ultimately, Messent's study provides a unique perspective on one of America's greatest novelists while at the same time giving us a distinctive cultural history of male friendship in nineteenth-century America.Readership: Readers of periodicals like The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, American Literary History, PMLA (see below for a full list of journals); students and professors of American literature, Twain fans.
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Peter Messent, Professor, University of Nottingham
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"Messent's in-depth research illuminates fascinating subtleties and eccentricities of three male friendships of the private man behind the mask of America's iconic writer" - J. D. Stahl, Times Higher Education "All in all, Messents detailed account of Twains friendships, his lucid argumentation, supported by his carefully researched and meticulously selected evidence, constructs a significant contribution not only to Twains scholarship but also to the underexplored and often contradictory area of the Victorian masculine ethos in the United States. The authors insightful remarks as well as his findings can be of fundamental importance to students and scholars alike, researching the obscure and occasionally ambiguous patriarchal
conceptualization of manliness and male identity in this period." - European Journal of American Studies
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Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1: Male Friendship and Post Civil War America
Chapter 2: Clemens and Twichell
Chapter 3: Clemens, Twichell and Religion
Chapter 4: 'My Dear 'Owells': Clemens and Howells
Chapter 5: Clemens, Howells, and Realism
Chapter 6: Clemens, Manhood, the Rogers Friendship, and 'Which Was the Dream?'
Chapter 7: Clemens and Rogers: 'Both Members of This Club'
Coda: Friendship's Limits: Fathers and Daughters Notes
Index
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The specification in this catalogue, including without limitation price, format, extent, number of illustrations, and month of publication, was as accurate as possible at the time the catalogue was compiled. Occasionally, due to the nature of some contractual restrictions, we are unable to ship a specific product to a particular territory. Jacket images are provisional and liable to change before publication.
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