Overview
In his autobiography, Mark Twain confesses that ""from the cradle up I have been like the rest of the race—never quite sane in the night."" Of all the memories and fears that disturbed Twain's peace of mind, none are more intractable than those associated with White fathers, Black men, the histories they reflect, and the future they promise. The Ghosts of Mark Twain: A Study of Manhood, Race, and the Gothic Imagination investigates these tense intersections in Twain's life and work. Ann M. Ryan maps Twain's resistance to ideals of white masculinity and his occasional capitulation to them. While Twain reflects upon the history of White men—including the intimate memory of his father's failures and abuses—he also imagines a future in which Black men will gain an authentic voice and agency. Preferring the messy humanity of Mark Twain, Ryan calls into question the ""St. Mark"" school of criticism, which celebrates—among other themes—Twain's easy relation to Black culture. In unpublished works and excised material, Twain conjures memories and specters of Black men that are far from comforting. No longer ""friends and allies"" like fictive Ol' Uncle Dan'l; these Black ghosts will settle for revenge if they can't get justice. Some of the works considered in The Ghosts of Mark Twain are not widely known: ""Which Was It?,"" ""The United States of Lyncherdom,"" No. 44: The Mysterious Stranger, and the Morgan manuscript of Pudd'nhead Wilson. Written into the record of these fragments is Twain's desire to be a different kind of White man, just as their incomplete nature demonstrates how often he stumbled in that effort. When Jim describes the White and Black spirits hovering over Pap Finn, Twain reveals his own conflicted position in America's racial history. And as Jim declares to Huck, ""A body can't tell yit which one gwyne to fetch him at de las.'""
Full Product Details
Author: ANN M. RYAN
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
Imprint: University of Missouri Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 3.30cm
, Length: 22.90cm
Weight: 0.594kg
ISBN: 9780826223425
ISBN 10: 0826223427
Pages: 326
Publication Date: 28 November 2025
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Reviews
“For its depth of research and its commendable lucidity, its command and inventive analyses of Mark Twain's negotiation of personal and cultural memory, The Ghosts of Mark Twain will be of interest to a wide audience as well as a scholarly one.”—Eric Lott, City University of New York, author of Black Mirror: The Cultural Contradictions of American Racism. “With wonderful clarity and coherence, Ann Ryan explores shadows and vexations in Mark Twain’s mind and work, ‘ghosts’ of many kinds that haunt and energize the major fiction, the tales and sketches, the unpublished writings, and the private life. Ryan gives us so much to think about and connect, but she never loses focus on what really matters: how Mark Twain himself remains such a powerful ghost in our own cultural life — a legacy that twelve decades of change and turmoil have not diminished.” —Bruce Michelson, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, author of Printer's Devil: Mark Twain and the American Publishing Revolution “The Ghosts of Mark Twain is expansive, deeply contextual, timely, and essential as it usefully rethinks Twain’s legacy, speaks to a nation’s persistent ills regarding race and identity, and fills a much-needed gap in current Twain scholarship.”—Chad Rohman, Dominican University, author of Mark Twain: Realism and Naturalism “The Ghosts of Mark Twain is a creative and compelling act of interpretation. Using unpublished manuscript fragments and excised passages from canonical works, Ryan probes the depths of the writer’s psyche, revealing a pervasive pattern of fears and anxieties that shaped both the stories he told and—more importantly—those he ultimately could not. Her ambitious, thought-provoking analysis is sure to spark lively debate as well as a substantive reassessment of Mark Twain’s identity and iconic stature in American culture.” —Kerry Driscoll, University of California, Berkeley, author of Mark Twain among the Indians and Other Indigenous Peoples “The title of Ann Ryan’s bracing and insightful book might lead one to expect a guided tour through Mark Twain’s ghost stories, a genre he dabbled in with mild enthusiasm. But the ghosts she has in mind, and the ‘gothic imagination’ she unpacks with meticulous care, constitute much bigger game. The ghosts that fascinate Ryan and that haunt Mark Twain’s published, unpublished, and incomplete writings are the residues of historical trauma, white-male supremacy, personal grief, and racial violence. A much earlier critic, H. L. Mencken, believed that Mark Twain would be remembered as the ‘destructive satirist’ who brought such ghosts back to life with devastating consequences for American innocence and exceptionalism, but Ryan argues that the ghosts remain largely closeted, partly as a result of Sam Clemens’s careful management of the Mark Twain brand, and partly because the hagiography industry that is Mark Twain Studies continues to protect that brand. In Ryan’s reading of his voluminous oeuvre, the Twain persona familiar to Disney theme parks and Hannibal tourist guides is the mask of ‘an artist whose desire to tell the truth competes with his desire to be celebrated and successful.’ Her powerful analysis gives voice and shape to the ghosts that haunted Mark Twain’s inescapably gothic imagination, depicting him as an artist who struggled with imperfect success ‘to confront the crimes of American history, which he inherits like family heirlooms.’” —Henry B. Wonham, University of Oregon, author of Mark Twain and the Art of the Tall Tale.
“For its depth of research and its commendable lucidity, its command and inventive analyses of Mark Twain's negotiation of personal and cultural memory, The Ghosts of Mark Twain will be of interest to a wide audience as well as a scholarly one.”—Eric Lott, City University of New York, author of Black Mirror: The Cultural Contradictions of American Racism.
“For its depth of research and its commendable lucidity, its command and inventive analyses of Mark Twain's negotiation of personal and cultural memory, The Ghosts of Mark Twain will be of interest to a wide audience as well as a scholarly one.”—Eric Lott, City University of New York, author of Black Mirror: The Cultural Contradictions of American Racism. “With wonderful clarity and coherence, Ann Ryan explores shadows and vexations in Mark Twain’s mind and work, ‘ghosts’ of many kinds that haunt and energize the major fiction, the tales and sketches, the unpublished writings, and the private life. Ryan gives us so much to think about and connect, but she never loses focus on what really matters: how Mark Twain himself remains such a powerful ghost in our own cultural life — a legacy that twelve decades of change and turmoil have not diminished.” —Bruce Michelson, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, author of Printer's Devil: Mark Twain and the American Publishing Revolution
Author Information
Ann Ryan is Professor of American Literature at Le Moyne College, past president of the Mark Twain Circle, the former editor of The Mark Twain Annual, and co-editor of the volume Cosmopolitan Twain, published by the University of Missouri Press. Her research focuses primarily on issues of race and racism in Mark Twain’s life, his writings, and in the society that produced him. She also writes on the intersections of the gothic and humor in American culture.
