News: A Skeptic’s Progress

From September 17 through January 2, 2011, The Morgan and The New York Public Library are holding a joint exhibition of the late, great American author Samuel Langhorne Clemens—better known by his pen name, Mark Twain. “Mark Twain was the quintessential American author, humorist, lecturer, essayist, and master of satire. Twain enjoyed immense public popularity during his lifetime and became a friend to presidents, artists, and industrialists.” The joint exhibition explores a recurring theme throughout Twain’s work: his uneasy, often critical, attitude towards a rapidly modernizing America.

Coinciding with the 175th anniversary of Twain’s birth in 1835, the exhibition at the Morgan includes more than 120 manuscripts and rare books, letters, notebooks, diaries, photographs, and drawings associated with the author’s life and work. Extensive portions of the autograph manuscripts of two key nonfiction works are featured in Life on the Mississippi (1883), and Following the Equator (1897). Also on view are four pages of Twain’s great work, The Adventures of Huckleberry, called by Ernest Hemingway the source of all modern American literature. The exhibition is supplemented by Twain’s correspondence, drawings, illustrated mock-ups for printed editions, photographs, and several three-dimensional artifacts.

 
The Morgan Museum and Library
225 Madison Ave, New York‎ – (212) 685-0008‎

View Larger Map