Image supplied by Stanley Gould

On September 8, 1908, Mark Twain's home was burglarized. From that point forward, the author had this "Notice To The Next Burglar" posted prominently on his front door.

From the always fascinating Letters of Note:

NOTICE.

To the next Burglar.

There is nothing but plated ware in this house, now and henceforth. You will find it in that brass thing in the dining-room over in the corner by the basket of kittens. If you want the basket, put the kittens in the brass thing. Do not make a noise — it disturbs the family. You will find rubbers in the front hall, by that thing which has the umbrellas in it, chiffonier, I think they call it, or pergola, or something like that.

Please close the door when you go away!

Very truly yours,

S.L. Clemens

Mark Twain was a ramblin’ man, and was so intent on living life to the fullest that he was brought back from the dead and lived another hundred years, according to Michael Kupperman, who selflessly agreed to illustrate Twain’s autobiography so that folks who can ‘t read all the words can stare at the pretty pictures. Click the link and find out a bit more of what Twain got up to after his first death!

Link

Hartford, Nov. 27/88

Livy Darling, I am grateful — gratefuler than ever before — that you were born, & that your love is mine & our two lives woven & welded together!

SLC.

See the full size version at Letters of Note. Link

(Image credit: The Mark Twain House & Museum)

Minnesotastan read the entire first volume of The Autobiography of Mark Twain and posted a review. The short version is that he’s not putting it on his recommended book list. However, he reprinted a story from the book in which Twain meets the then 14-year-old Helen Keller. He labeled the story with the tag “impressive.” Link

Mark Twain’s classic novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been republished without the n-word, a term now deeply offensive to American sensibilities. But Gabriel Diani and Etta Devine think that this change doesn’t go far enough. They have a Kickstarter project to republish the novel with the word “robot” replacing the n-word, and further alternations to the text to make the character Jim clearly a robot instead of a human. At the link, you can view a hilarious video that they’ve put together explaining the venture.

Link via Gizmodo

Now, Twain scholar Alan Gribben plans to do something about it: he’s going to replace the word with something less racially offensive.

Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a classic by most any measure—T.S. Eliot called it a masterpiece, and Ernest Hemingway pronounced it the source of "all modern American literature." Yet, for decades, it has been disappearing from grade school curricula across the country, relegated to optional reading lists, or banned outright, appearing again and again on lists of the nation’s most challenged books, and all for its repeated use of a single, singularly offensive word: "nigger."

Twain himself defined a "classic" as "a book which people praise and don’t read." Rather than see Twain’s most important work succumb to that fate, Twain scholar Alan Gribben and NewSouth Books plan to release a version of Huckleberry Finn, in a single volume with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, that does away with the "n" word (as well as the "in" word, "Injun") by replacing it with the word "slave."

"This is not an effort to render Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn colorblind," said Gribben, speaking from his office at Auburn University at Montgomery, where he’s spent most of the past 20 years heading the English department. "Race matters in these books. It’s a matter of how you express that in the 21st century."

Link

A classic case of cencorship by the politically correct or the appropriately sensitive approach to racial injustice of the past? What do you think?

Upon his death, Mark Twain left behind 5000 pages of an autobiography that included a hand-written note stating that the memoir was not to be published until 100 years after his death.

Now that we’ve reached that deadline, the publishing is beginning, and his estate has split the pages into a trilogy, the first volume of which is coming soon.

Scholars are divided as to why Twain wanted the first-hand account of his life kept under wraps for so long. Some believe it was because he wanted to talk freely about issues such as religion and politics. Others argue that the time lag prevented him from having to worry about offending friends.

Link – via gothamist

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by nmiller.

Dear Sir,

Your letter is an insoluble puzzle to me. The handwriting is good and exhibits considerable character, and there are even traces of intelligence in what you say, yet the letter and the accompanying advertisements profess to be the work of the same hand. The person who wrote the advertisements is without doubt the most ignorant person now alive on the planet; also without doubt he is an idiot, an idiot of the 33rd degree, and scion of an ancestral procession of idiots stretching back to the Missing Link.

Read the rest: Link – via The Litter Box