What’s New
Free Play Reading: "The Gilded Age"
"The Gilded Age – A Play" will be presented in a free reading on Thursday, September 16, at 7:00 p.m. “There’s millions in it!” became one of the catchwords of nineteenth century America in 1873 after Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner published their novel The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today. The phrase was uttered by the eternally naïve, eternally broke Colonel Beriah Sellers, one of Twain’s most famous characters, who was always on the lookout for a get-rich-quick deal. It’s a tale of Washington corruption and crooked Western land dealing, -- and is thus still a “Tale of Today.”And of course, in the book’s title Twain and Warner provided a perfect name for the explosive era in which it was written. Now Ellen Faith Brodie and David Pellegrini of Eastern Connecticut State University have created a stage version of this sprawling work – written by Twain and his Hartford neighbor Warner in response to a challenge from their wives to write a first novel. The play will be presented in a free reading on Thursday, September 16, at 7:00 p.m. at The Mark Twain House & Museum. The one-night-only reading of the world premiere stage adaptation, directed by Brodie, will be performed by a cast of ECSU theater students. The event is free, with no reservations required. “We are delighted to welcome the ECSU Theater Department and its new adaptation of “The Gilded Age” to our museum,” said Jacques Lamarre, Communications Manager at the museum. “This rarely read Twain classic was the only stage success during his lifetime. We are sure he would be delighted with this new theatrical script making its premiere at Mark Twain’s home.” [Note: The Gilded Age – A Play will be performed onstage at ECSU’s Henry Hope Theater on November 9-14. For information and tickets for those performances, call the Box Office 860-465-5123.]
Our Gala! Nov. 6! Save the Date!
Just in time for Mark Twain's 175th birthday, join us for an evening inspired by his 70th. It was in 1905 that his friends threw a bash for the white-maned author at Delmonico's, the legendary New York City restaurant. Our choice for Twain's 175th is Hartford's most elegant venue, the Hartford Club. Your attendance at the Fall Gala, a Mark Twain House & Museum tradition, will help ensure that the Hartford home and the educational programs presented by the Museum continue for years to come. The Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc., is Presenting Sponsor of the event. For more information, call 860-280-3112.
Nook Farm Book Club: 'Finn'
Meets the first Thursday of every month, reading works by or about Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe, as well as exemplary books on subjects that captivated them. Receptions are at 5 p.m., discussions are at 5:30 p.m. Presented in collaboration with the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center with support from the Connecticut Humanities Council. To register, call Kate Rounds at (860) 522-9258 ext. 317. All books are available at the the museum gift shops.
Huckleberry Finn Exhibit Opens!
It’s always banned somewhere, and that’s been true since it first appeared in print in the United States in 1885. It’s also been called the founding work of modern American literature by no less than Ernest Hemingway.
Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn takes the reader down the Mississippi, through tragic family feuds, into the world of Missouri con men and respectable riverside families, through wild confusions of identity and past sweeping vistas of river scenery. Most important, it takes the reader through the intricacies of a boy’s spirit, and his conscience – in a society where he has to choose between his friendship for the slave Jim and the lies that everyone tells him are truths.
When the book finishes with “The End,” the words are followed by the simple closing: “Yours Truly, Huck Finn.”
To mark the 125th anniversary of the U.S. publication of the book, The Mark Twain House & Museum has collected rarely seen artifacts from its collection in a new major exhibit.
“Yours Truly, Huck Finn” opens August 9 and runs until January 11, 2011.
The exhibit is curated by Patti Philippon, the museum’s Beatrice Fox Auerbach Chief Curator. It includes the rare “salesman's dummy,” the bound prospectus that was shown to potential purchasers by the publisher’s door-to-door salesmen; first editions of the book; and an early magazine serialization. There are important firsts, such as first printings in other languages, appearances in film, TV, and other popular culture media.
An activity area for children will help bring the book alive for the younger set. The exhibit is open during regular museum hours: Monday through Saturday, 9:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m., and Sunday, noon-5:30 p.m. There is a museum-only admission of $5.00 for visitors not touring the Mark Twain House. This reduced admission includes access to all exhibits, the grounds, the museum patio and the Ken Burns introductory film on Twain’s life.
The exhibit is sponsored by The Edward C. and Ann T. Roberts Foundation.
Susan Campbell Writing Class
Hartford Courant columnist Susan Campbell will lead a workshop on Creative Non-Fiction at The Mark Twain House & Museum this fall. The class led by the feisty, eloquent Hartford Courant columnist, and author of the acclaimed memoir "Dating Jesus," continues the new Writing at the Mark Twain House program, established last year to further the museum’s stated mission of carrying forward the legacy of Mark Twain by serving as a literary center. Creative Non-Fiction uses the literary techniques of fiction to create its effects – while remaining rigorously factual. Campbell’s classes will treat all manner of such work, from opinion writing to autobiography to essay writing to general truth-telling, guided by the spirits of E. B. White, Jessica Mitford, Tracy Kidder and Joan Didion, among others. “Everywhere, in moments you might let go by, there is the entire story of the world, waiting to be told,” says Campbell. “We're going to work on noticing those moments, and recording them.” The six sessions will run from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday evenings, beginning November 10 and running to December 22 (no class November 24). There is a fee of $500. Call Steve Courtney at 860-247-0998, Ext. 243, or email steve.courtney@marktwainhouse.org to register. Deadline for registration and full payment is October 15. (Last spring’s memoir session was quickly oversubscribed, so be sure to act quickly.) Campbell, like Twain, hails from Missouri, but the connection is more than geographical. She counts Twain among the writers who inspire her work, and her mixture of wild humor, deep insight and a hunger for social justice is deeply reminiscence of Twain’s. She is an award-winning columnist at the Courant, where her work has been recognized by the National Women's Political Caucus, New England Associated Press News Executives, the Society for Professional Journalists, the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors, the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, and the Sunday Magazine Editors Association. Her column about the shootings at lottery headquarters in March 1998 was part of the Courant's Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage. The mother of two adult sons, she has a bachelor's degree from University of Maryland, and a master's degree from Hartford Seminary. She lives in Connecticut with her husband. In a review of Dating Jesus, her memoir of her fundamentalist Christian upbringing and ultimate development away from it, Mother Jones wrote: "Rarely has a genuine feminist emerged from the modern evangelical movement. An exception is Susan Campbell.” Author Wally Lamb said of the book: "In her youth, Susan Campbell was the class virgin, the sophomore homecoming princess, and the perennial smarty-pants winner of her fundamentalist church's Bible Bowl. But she was also a scrappy little outfielder and a self-described Missouri hillbilly whose budding feminism led her to question why girls and women should be content with second-class spiritual citizenship. That isometric push of irresistible force against immovable object followed Campbell into adulthood and is both the engine and the energy that drives her remarkable memoir.” Writing at the Mark Twain House began this past spring with a course in memoir writing by Lary Bloom and Suzanne Levine. The course was a tremendous success. Some of the work produced, and news about the program, can be seen at http://writingatthemarktwainhouse.blogspot.com/.
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Twain’s Centennial: 2010 |
2010 is a huge year in Twain’s legacy and we are celebrating big-time, with one-time only events throughout the year. |
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