Comments on: This is a color photograph of Mark Twain

By: Barry Meislin

Barry Meislin — Thu, 14 Feb 2019 10:56:08 +0000

Synchronicity strikes!: Currently, there is an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (NYC) featuring a French photographer who toured and photographed the Middle East, Egypt and Turkey in the mid-to-late 19th century.

On Twain’s tour of the Holy Land in 1867 (featured in his travelogue, “Innocents Abroad”), he would likely have seen quite a few of the sites just as they appeared in the photographs (daguerrotypes, actually).
https://www.timesofisrael.com/the-earliest-surviving-photographs-of-jerusalem-live-on-in-historic-exhibit/
https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2019/monumental-journey-girault-de-prangey-daguerreotypes

By: Julie near Chicago

Julie near Chicago — Thu, 14 Feb 2019 05:30:58 +0000

Thanks to both Artfl (for bringing up Felix Nadar) and to Aesop for digging up her link to a collection of his photos of the famous, which I followed — very interesting. I must admit I had no idea that M. Dumas was part Negro. I was certainly a big fan of The Count of Monte Cristo, which I discovered as a teenager.

O/T: Dogs are my first passion, but cats aren’t all that far behind. While at Aesop’s site on Nadar, I followed a link to a delicious-looking collection of photos from the book Kittens and Cats: A First Reader, published in 1911 by Eulalie Osgood Grover. The title of the page is, “Kittens and Cats: A First Reader (1911) — Cats and Captions before the Internet Age.” It includes an interesting paragraph on the book and the photos:

https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/kittens-and-cats-a-first-reader-1911-cats-and-captions-before-the-internet-age/

This is a collection of photos from the book, with a link to the book itself, which can be downloaded from the Waybook Machine, at

https://ia601400.us.archive.org/9/items/kittenscatsbooko00grov/kittenscatsbooko00grov.pdf

By: Julie near Chicago

Julie near Chicago — Thu, 14 Feb 2019 05:01:58 +0000

Neo, your grandmother was born in 1875? We have the year in common then — my maternal grandparents were born in 1875 and 1876. I have three Victorian-era photo albums of theirs, but I don’t know the names of any of the people in them, let alone whether they’re all relatives.

I wish I did.

By: AesopFan

AesopFan — Thu, 14 Feb 2019 01:21:16 +0000

Artfldgr on February 12, 2019 at 7:53 pm at 7:53 pm said:
* * *
Thanks for the tip on Felix Nadar. What a treasure!
Believe it or not – he pioneered the gif also, as shown in the beginning of this article. Dumas’ portrait is one of those included therein.

https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/photographs-of-the-famous-by-felix-nadar/

Félix Nadar was the pseudonym of Gaspard-Félix Tournachon (1 April 1820, Paris – 20 March 1910), a French photographer, caricaturist, journalist, novelist and balloonist. He took his first photographs in 1853 and pioneered the use of artificial lighting in photography, working in the catacombs of Paris. Around 1863, Nadar built a huge (6000 m³) balloon named Le Géant (“The Giant”), thereby inspiring Jules Verne’s Five Weeks in a Balloon. Although the “Géant” project was initially unsuccessful Nadar was still convinced that the future belonged to heavier-than-air machines. Later, “The Society for the Encouragement of Aerial Locomotion by Means of Heavier than Air Machines” was established, with Nadar as president and Verne as secretary. Nadar was also the inspiration for the character of Michael Ardan in Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon. In April 1874, he lent his photo studio to a group of painters, thus making the first exhibition of the Impressionists possible. (Wikipedia)

More here.
https://www.pinterest.com/hellengharibian/felix-nadar/

By: AesopFan

AesopFan — Thu, 14 Feb 2019 01:15:38 +0000

An excellent stage adaptation of Twain’s “Diary of Adam and Eve” was done by PBS, starring Meredith Baxter Birney & her husband, David.
Our kids loved this when it aired, and wore out the VHS copy we made at the time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjFqkFW6PG4

By: Frederick

Frederick — Wed, 13 Feb 2019 17:33:16 +0000

Jim is always called just “Jim” in Twain’s books, both by the characters and by the narrator. His n-word prenomen seems to have been given by commentators and critics.

He also has an interesting footnote in Tom Sawyer, when the boys refer to a dog as “Bull Harbison”. Harbison is the family name of the dog’s owner. A slave would have been called “Harbison’s Bull”, he notes.

By: TommyJay

TommyJay — Wed, 13 Feb 2019 16:10:12 +0000

Like Swift, Twain was an anti-vivisectionist. The short story “A Dog’s Tale” is written from a dog’s point of view, or at least a humorist’s take on it. It starts very wittily but slowly progresses to horrible, then horrific. Don’t read it if you are a hard core animal lover, but the writing is amazing.

I think Faulkner is America’s best, but Twain is a close second and very underrated by academia.

By: Fred the Fourth

Fred the Fourth — Wed, 13 Feb 2019 14:59:16 +0000

Permit me to strongly recommend Twain’s
Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc

By: Artfldgr

Artfldgr — Wed, 13 Feb 2019 14:11:43 +0000

PA Cat on February 12, 2019 at 10:10 pm at 10:10 pm said: e openly acknowledged the superiority of cats to humans: “Of all God’s creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the lash……”

“When red-headed people are above a certain social grade their hair is auburn.”
? Mark Twain

[i started out straw, then strawberry blonde to later auburn, now just more brown…]

“While the rest of the species is descended from apes, redheads are descended from cats.”
? Mark Twain

yeah… try to herd us, we never quite fit… we even have unique personalities born of our natural ostracism… and natural hatred… among other interesting qualities of bluies everywhere…

By: Artfldgr

Artfldgr — Wed, 13 Feb 2019 14:07:34 +0000

Roy Nathanson on February 12, 2019 at 8:34 pm at 8:34 pm said:

For my money, Mark Twain was one of the most astute observers of human ever born.

Wouldnt it be a rip to see him, Baltasar Gracian, and Alexis de Tocqueville all getting drunk on commentary watching now…. though twain would have advantage of knowing the others, while they would not know him…

i always hated secondary sources so i like Gracian… “His writings were lauded by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche”…

oh boy…