Samuel Clemens in Buffalo: A Woman and an Artist

Samuel Clemens in Buffalo: A Woman and an Artist

Preface

While literary critics and historians alike have thoroughly examined the influence of Samuel Langhorne Clemens’ Missouri boyhood and foreign travels on his writing, scholars outside of Western New York consistently overlook the importance of the eighteen months he spent in Buffalo from August 1869 to March 1871. Though a Buffalo resident for the past twenty years, I was also only vaguely aware that Clemens passed through until Dr. Walter Sharrow of the Canisius College History Department mentioned his local stay.

The suggestion that America’s best satirist lived in Buffalo—a location that could provide a contemporary wit with a wide range of material—tickled my historical sensibilities. Nearly immediately, I began to speculate why America’s most famous writer would migrate to Buffalo. After I discarded my first ideas—the weather, the Buffalo Bills, the efficiency and effectiveness of our local political leaders—I concluded it must be because of a woman. Indeed, my early research echoed this assumption, reinforcing my interest in Twain’s experience here and inspiring the first section of this paper.

When furthering my research, I developed a second point of interest. Two local scholars, Martin B. Fried and Tom Reigstad both suggest that Buffalo was a major point of transition for Clemens. Fried writes, “His Buffalo experience, scanted in most biographies, has significance because it was the final stage in a long campaign for an artistic existence free of financial worries and of the burdens of journalistic writing.” This suggestion—that his time in Buffalo inspired his development from humorist and journalist to the novelist who produced Huck Finn—intrigued me de...

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_____________. 11 and 13 March 1871.Mark Twain’s Letters, vol. 4, 349-350.

Langdon, Olivia. 17 June 1868. Mark Twain’s Letters, vol. 2, 286.

Twain, Mark. “Salutatory,” Buffalo Express. August 21, 1869: reprinted in Joseph B. McCullough and Janice McIntire-Strasburg, Mark Twain and the Buffalo Express, 5.

Twain, Mark. “A General Reply.” Buffalo Express. November 12, 1870: reprinted in Joseph B. McCullough and Janice McIntire-Strasburg, Mark Twain and the Buffalo Express, 254.

Secondary Sources

Martin B. Fried, “Mark Twain in Buffalo,” Niagara Frontier 5, no. 4 (Buffalo: Buffalo Historical Society, Winter 1959): 89.

Justin Kaplan, Mr. Clemens and Mr. Twain, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966), 52.

Joseph B. McCullough and Janice McIntire-Strasburg, Mark Twain and the Buffalo Express. DeKalb: Northern Illinois Press: 1999, xix.