Current Exhibition

What Happened to Mark Twain's Books?

During their lives together, Sam and Livy Clemens collected an impressive library of books that they shared with their daughters, Susy, Clara and Jean, family members, and friends. Over the years, the library was dispersed in a variety of ways. Some books were given to family and friends, others were lost in transit, particularly during the many moves of their household. Twain himself often cut volumes apart to use long quotations in his own work.

Near the end of his life, in 1908, Twain gave 3,000 titles from his personal collection to establish a public library in Redding, CT, where he built his last home, Stormfield. For years, the books were circulated as Twain intended. Unfortunately, fewer than 300 volumes remain today, and are now part of a non-circulated research collection.

Following Twain's death in 1910, the family's books were further disseminated. His literary executor, Albert Bigelow Paine, oversaw a 1911 New York auction of 438 books. Clara Clemens Samassoud, Twain's only surviving child, sold 355 of her father's books in a 1951 auction in Hollywood, CA. Both auctions put books into the hands of private collectors and university libraries. Clara later gave 100 of her father's books to The Mark Twain Papers & Project at the University of California, Berkeley. Ninety volumes given to the Clemens' maid of 30 years, Katy Leary, were donated by her family to Elmira College and are now housed as the Katharine and Robert Antenne Collection in the college's Mark Twain Archive.

Clemens family books still surface through dealers or auctions of private collections. A collector who purchased books at the 1951 auction later stored them in barrels, where they remained for decades. After the books were discovered, they were auctioned in San Francisco in 1997 and The Mark Twain House & Museum acquired 210 titles, some now on display in Marks on Papers: Mark Twain's Personal Library.