The Letters of Mark Twain and Joseph Hopkins Twichell showcases all known correspondence between Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain) and Joseph Hopkins Twichell, a minister of Hartford, Connecticut. The deep friendship of Clemens and Twichell rarely fails to surprise, given Twain’s general reputation of being antireligious.
The dialogue between these two men—one an inimitable American literary figure, the other a man of deep perception who himself possessed both narrative skill and wit—has been much discussed by Twain biographers. But it’s never been presented in this way before: as a record of their surviving correspondence; of the various turns of their decades-long exchanges; of what Twichell described in his journals as the “long full feast of talk” with his friend, whom he would always call “Mark.”
