“Mark Twain’s Remarkable Achievement: Effacing the South for Northern Audiences.” Rocky Mountain Review. Spring 2013.

I wrote a piece about Twain’s 1884-85 lecture tour alongside George Washington Cable. Through a study of transcripts, performance reviews, and advertisements cataloged in Stephen Railton’s website, Mark Twain in His Times, I argue that Twain’s onstage persona distanced him from his southern past. Instead, Twain gained his reputation as America’s writer through his performance as Cable’s opposite. As a result, audiences from Tennessee to New York eagerly claimed him as one of their own.