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Two events organized by the Center For Mark Twain Studies focus on the complex legacy of Mark Twain and the omissions and misrepresentations of his wife, Olivia Langdon Clemens, and extended family.
Cast (in order of appearance): Matt Seybold, Ann Ryan, Kerry Driscoll, Barbara Snedecor, Chuck Lindsay
Dates Recorded: October 16, 2025 and November 30, 2023
Music: Danny Weiss Quartet, Moby
Featured Guests
Kerry Driscoll is Associate Editor at the Mark Twain Papers & Project and the author of Mark Twain Among The Indians & Other Indigenous Peoples (U. California, 2018).
Ann Ryan is Professor of American Literature at Le Moyne College and author of The Ghosts of Mark Twain (U. Missouri, 2025)
Barbara Snedecor is Emeritus Director of the Center For Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College and the editor of Gravity: Selected Letters of Olivia Langdon Clemens (U. Missouri, 2023).
Matt Seybold is Associate Professor of American Literature & Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College, as well as resident scholar at the Center For Mark Twain Studies and executive producer of The American Vandal Podcast.
Episode Bibliography
Jonathan Arac, Huckleberry Finn as Idol & Target: The Functions of Criticism in Our Time (U. Wisconsin, 1997)
Joshua Chadwick, The Jim Dilemma: Reading Race in Huckleberry Finn (U Mississippi, 1998)
Ron Chernow, Mark Twain (PenguinRandomHouse, 2025)
Kerry Driscoll, “A Delicate Balance: Work & Play in Mark Twain’s Creative Process” Center For Mark Twain Studies (October 15, 2025)
Kerry Driscoll, Mark Twain Among The Indians & Other Indigenous Peoples (U. California, 2018)
Percival Everett, James (Doubleday, 2024)
Susan K. Harris, The Courtship of Olivia Langdon & Mark Twain (Cambridge UP, 1996)
Harper’s Magazine, “A Mark Twain Revival” Harper’s Magazine Substack (May 23, 2025)
Ann Ryan, The Ghosts of Mark Twain: A Study of Manhood, Race, & The Gothic Imagination (U. Missouri, 2025)
Ann Ryan & Josephy B. McCullough, Cosmopolitan Twain (U. Missouri, 2011)
Matt Seybold, “The Twain Doctrine” Mark Twain Annual (2023)
Matt Seybold, “Mark Twain’s Playground” North American Review (Spring 2024)
Matt Seybold, “The Gospel of Revolt: Mark Twain in Elmira” C19 Podcast (December 17, 2019)
Matt Seybold, “Twainspotting” Harper’s (August, 2025)
Matt Seybold, “Life, In Purgatory” Center For Mark Twain Studies (April 13, 2020)
Laura Skandera-Trombley, Mark Twain in The Company of Women (U. Pennsylvania, 1997)
Barbara E. Snedecor, Gravity: Selected Letters of Olivia Langdon Clemens (U. Missouri, 2023)
John Jeremiah Sullivan, “Twain Dreams” Harper’s Magazine (June 2025)
Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson: The Authoritative Edition (U. California, 2024) [Review by Matt Seybold for ALH Review]
Mark Twain, “The The Person Sitting In Darkness” North American Review (February 1901)
Mark Twain, “The United States of Lyncherdom” Prospects (October 2000)
Mark Twain, Roughing It (1872)
Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts (U. California, 1969 )
Mark Twain, “Which Was It?” in Which Was The Dream? & Other Symbolic Writings of The Later Years (U. California, 1966)
Event Copy
