INTRODUCTORY

In the past, the attitude of the average American toward Mark Twain has
been most characteristically expressed in a sort of complacent and
chuckling satisfaction. There was pride in the thought that America,
the colossal, had produced a superman of humour. The national vanity
was touched when the nations of the world rocked and roared with
laughter over the comically primitive barbarisms of the funny man from
the "Wild and Woolly West." Mark Twain was lightly accepted as an
international comedian magically evoking the laughter of a world. It
would be a mis-statement to affirm that the works of Mark Twain were
reckoned as falling within the charmed circle of "Literature." They
were not reckoned in connexion with literature at all.

The fingers of one hand number those who realized in Mark Twain one of
the supreme geniuses of our age. Even in the event of his death, when
the flood-gates of critical chatter have been thrown emptily wide, there
is room for grave doubt whether a realization of the unique and
incomparable position of Mark Twain in the republic of letters has fully
dawned upon the American consciousness. The literatures of England and
Europe do not posit an aesthetic, embracing work of such primitive
crudity and apparently unstudied frankness as the work of Mark Twain.
It is for American criticism to posit this more comprehensive aesthetic,
and to demonstrate that the work of Mark Twain is the work of a great
artist. It would be absurd to maintain that Mark Twain's appeal to
posterity depends upon the dicta of literary criticism. It would be
absurd to deny that upon America rests the task of demonstrating, to a
world willing enough to be convinced, that Mark Twain is one of the
supreme and imperishable glories of American literature.