Current Exhibition

What Mark Twain Read

Mark Twain enjoyed reading biography, history, and science. He faithfully read periodicals such as Harper's, The Century, and Atlantic Monthly and a wide variety of newspapers from The Hartford Daily Courant to Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper. He greatly admired ancient writers including Pliny, Herodotus, and Plutarch, the writing of his close friend William Dean Howells, and the poetry of Robert Browning. The books he read for enjoyment and for research influenced his own writings,
including:

• The Holy Bible Containing the Old and New Testaments, c. 1846 ed
• The Koran: Translated into English from the Original Arabic. (nd)
• The Divine Comedy, Dante, translated by Longfellow, 1867 ed.
• Science and Health: A Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, 1884
• The Life and Travels of Herodotus in the Fifth Century Before Christ, Herodotus, 1856 ed
• The Substance of Faith Allied with Science: A Catechism for Parents and Teachers, Sir Oliver Lodge, 1907
• Wonderful Balloon Ascents; or the Conquest of the Skies. A History of Balloons and Balloon Voyages, Fulgence Marion, 1871
• Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, 1818
• Idylls of the Kings, Alfred Lord Tennyson, 1871
• The Tour of the World in Eighty Days, Jules Verne, 1874
• Wonderful Characters: Comprising Memoirs and Anecdotes of the Most Remarkable Persons of Every Age and Nation, Collected from the Most Authentic Sources, Henry Wilson, 1854
• The Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan, nd
• The French Revolution: A History, Thomas Carlyle, 1856
• Adventures of Buffalo Bill, William Frederick Cody, 1905
• The Plains of the Great West and Their Inhabitants, being a Description of the Plains, Game, Indians & c. of the Great North American Desert, Richard Irving Dodge, 1877
• Historical Tales of Lancastrian Times, H.P. Dunster, 1864
• A New and Complete Concordance to the Holy Scriptures, on the Basis of Cruden, John Eadie, 1850
• The Deserted Village, Oliver Goldsmith
• A Popular History of France, Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot,
• Military and Religious Life in the Middle Ages, Paul Lacroix,
• History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne, W.E.H. Lecky, 1874
• Critical, Historical, and Miscellaneous Essays, Thomas Baington Macaulay
• History of England from the Accession of James II, Thomas Babington Macaulay
• Society in America, Harriet Martineau, 1837 (R)
• The Diary of Samuel Pepys, nd (MTH)
• Three Plays of Shakespeare, Algernon Charles Swinburne, 1909 (E)
• The Land of the White Elephant: Sights and Scenes in South-east Asia. A Personal Narrative of Travel and Adventure in Farther India, Embracing the Countries of Burma, Siam, Cambodia, and Cochin-China, Frank Vincent, 1874
• Webster's Practical Dictionary of the English Language, 1884
• Our Philippine Problem: A Study of American Colonial Policy, Henry Parker Willis, 1905
• Wonderful Characters: Comprising Memoirs and Anecdotes of the Most remarkable Persons of Every Age and Nation, Collected from the Most Authentic Sources, Henry Wilson, 1854
• Travels in the United States, Etc., During 1849 and 1850, Lady Emmeline Stuart-Wortley, 1851
• The Grandissimes: a Story of Creole Life, George Washington Cable, 1883
• Journal of Researches Into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries Visited during the Voyage of the H.M.S. Beagle Round the World, Charles Darwin, 1890
• Les amours du chevalier de faublas, Louvet de Couvray, 1884
• The Novels and Miscellaneous Works of Daniel Defoe: Moll Flanders, and History of the Devil, Daniel Defoe, 1871
• Taking the Bastille, or Six Years Later, Alexandre Dumas, nd
• Sketches of America: A Narrative of a Journey of Five Thousand Miles Through the Eastern and Western States of America, Henry Bradshaw Fearon, 1879
• Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy, 1895
• The House of Seven Gables, A Romance, Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1872
• Venetian Life (1874,) The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885,) Indian Summer (1886,) William Dean Howells
• Inventors at Work: With Chapters on Discovery, George Iles, 1906
• Many Inventions, Rudyard Kipling, 1908
• Plutarch's Lives of Illustrious Men, c. 1880 ed.
• Prize Essays on "Billiards as an Amusement for all Classes," 1873
• Aspects of the Earth: A Popular Account of Some Geological Phenomena, Nathaniel Shaler, 1904
• The History of the Hebrew Nation, and Its Literature, Samuel Sharpe, 1908
• Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, William Milligan Sloane, 1896
• The Future of the American Negro, Booker T. Washington, 1899

Books and writers that Mark Twain disliked:

• Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, Jane Austen, nd
• Leather Stocking Tales: The Pioneer; or the Sources of the Susquehanna: A Descriptive Tale, James Fennimore Cooper, 1876
• Middlemarch: A Story of Provincial Life, George Eliot, nd
• Edgar Allen Poe, John Joyce, nd
• Boer-War Lyrics, Louis Selmer, 1903
• The Boyhood of Christ, Lew Wallace, 1888
• Pearl Island, Andrew Caster, 1903
• The Waverly Novels, Sir Walter Scott, 1814
• Saratoga in 1901. Fun, Love, Society and Satire, Melville de Lancey Landon, (pseudo Eli Perkins,) 1872