The last entry in Mark Twain's Autobiography shows him feeling beaten and bewildered. His daughter Jean had died suddenly two days earlier, on Christmas Eve morning, 1909. Too weak and distraught to attend the December 26th funeral in Elmira, New York, Twain stayed in Connecticut, watching the clock.... Read more...

Faced with conflicting evidence and no smoking kiss, the biographers of Twain's last years have staked claims on every available patch of the 'other woman' question. Some are convinced that Twain's relationship with Isabel Lyon, his secretary and house manager, was the affection of a lonely widower for a compassionate helpmeet. Read more in the fifth installment of our Twain: Milestones series. Read more...

A year before his marriage, Mark Twain predicted that by taking on "the task of making a Christian of me," Olivia Langdon would "unwittingly dig a matrimonial pit and end by tumbling into it." When Livy died in 1904, after thirty-four years of marriage, it was Twain's turn to tumble. Read more in the fourth installment of our Twain: Milestones series. Read more...

We've long been big fans of Kate Beaton's clever and well-read comic Hark, a Vagrant! (who could resist subjects like "Dude-Watching with the Brontes"?) Her most recent strip is one of our favorites to date, as it attempts to answer the question of what Jane Austen would have made of the recent attempts to revamp her novels. Read more...

In Mark Twain's last years, he had "reached the grandfather stage of life without grandchildren," and said he had nothing but "a forlorn sea of banquets and speechmaking" to replenish his "dry and dusty" heart. His answer was to create an "Aquarium Club" of young devotees. Read more in the third installment of our Twain: Milestones series. Read more...