Description: The unique contribution of this book is the focus upon the testimony of Twain's audience as a unique "reading community"-how his fiction intersected with their real lives, how he impacted American publishing, literacy, and educational reform, and how Americans loved the theatr...
Brief description: Robert McParland is Professor of English and the Humanities at Felician University, USA. He is a singer-songwriter who holds degrees in arts administration, literary studies, and cultural history. His books include Beyond Gatsby: How Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Other Writers of the 1920s Shaped American Literature (2015), Citizen Steinbeck (2016), and Rock Music Imagination (2019), all published by Bloomsbury.
Review Quotes:
"McParland studies readership in an attempt to place Twain in terms of the perceptions and responses of reading 'circles, ' social strata, and regional audiences. McParland references Rasmussen and other studies, and he cites a number of letters to Twain from his readers in the collection of the Mark Twain Papers at Berkeley. In so doing, he creates a patchwork of responses reflecting readers' sense of Twain as a person and the meaning to them of his works and career. . . .the text is clear and the documents provide interesting reading. . . .Overall, the information McParland offers will stimulate thought about Twain's reception. Chapters on marketing subscription books, childhood reading, the global audience, and responses to Twain's place in literature from 1910 through 1960 read smoothly and should hold a reader's interest. Summing Up: Recommended . . . Lower-division undergraduates through faculty." --Choice Reviews
"This is more than a study in literary influence. Robert McParland has driven a core sample deep into the history of American culture, revealing the responses that Mark Twain evoked in readers of all social and ethnic backgrounds." --Jonathan Rose, Drew University