Mark Twain: Author’s 150-Year-Old Stories Uncovered

Mark Twain, originally born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in 1835 in Florida, Missouri (not a typo — it’s an actual thing), is perhaps best known for writing the complementary novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, as well as being an avid abolitionist and opponent of slavery. But now, some of Twain’s lesser-known works have come to light, thanks to lots and lots of newspaper archives. In some perhaps odder news, Twain will also be a character played by Vanilla Ice in an upcoming movie called The Ridiculous 6.

The Daily Dot reported that the discovery was the work of Bob Hirst. Hirst is the editor of University of California, Berkley’s Mark Twain Papers and Project, and he and his team have recovered stories and articles written by Twain in the mid-1860s, all of which seem to have been done for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise.

The site went on to state that much of Twain’s work was lost during a fire at the Territorial Enterprise, but that some were reconstructed by searching through the print archives of other local papers that had picked the pieces up. It’s pretty amazing the pieces were reassembled so long after they were written when you consider how much less technologically advanced everything was in Twain’s time period. The only record of these pieces would have been a written or typed one, and even those would have been copied manually rather than using a copy machine.

Anyone who is interested in reading Twain’s pieces can do so here. As you’ll see, some of the pieces uncovered include an op-ed, a short story titled “A Scene At Rawhide Ranch,” and an essay titled “Our City Government,” among others. The op-ed written by Twain definitely carries the satirical, comedic tone his novels do (he even compares the chief of police to a dog and then goes out of his way to point out when he means the dog and when he means the chief).

Even today, Mark Twain’s writings haven’t been without controversy. Some schools have moved to ban The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer for their frequent use of the “N-word.” Most likely, Twain never meant to offend anyone, but the word has become something of a sore spot in black-white race relations. Ironically enough, Twain was the furthest thing from a racist, supporting the end of slavery and the movement to give African Americans equal rights.

[Photo Credits: L.A. Times]