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5 - Mark Twain’s “Small Test”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 April 2023

Stanley Finger
Affiliation:
Washington University, St Louis
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Summary

Clemens must have continued to have his doubts about the head readers into the 1870s, because he decided to conduct an experiment of his own on a leading head reader in 1872. Having discovered some of the tricks mediums were using, he made two trips to Lorenzo Fowler’s phrenological emporium in London. He dressed and acted like a nobody during the first trip. Then, after some weeks had passed, he returned and presented himself as the famous American humorist and author Mark Twain. He would later describe his great awakening in a short but serious published letter, and with humor and artistic liberties in an autobiographical dictation and his posthumous but never-completed novel Eddypus. The letter and phrenological parts of his dictation and Eddypus are presented in this chapter. Being told on his first visit that his head had a cavity above the organ for a sense of humor and on his second that he had a Mount Everest in the same spot would change how he would depict the head readers in his most famous novels. Writing as Mark Twain, Samuel Clemens would now set forth to educate the gullible public.

Type
Chapter
Information
Mark Twain, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, and the Head Readers
Literature, Humor, and Faddish Phrenology
, pp. 100 - 126
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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  • Mark Twain’s “Small Test”
  • Stanley Finger, Washington University, St Louis
  • Book: Mark Twain, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, and the Head Readers
  • Online publication: 17 April 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009301251.006
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  • Mark Twain’s “Small Test”
  • Stanley Finger, Washington University, St Louis
  • Book: Mark Twain, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, and the Head Readers
  • Online publication: 17 April 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009301251.006
Available formats
×

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To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Mark Twain’s “Small Test”
  • Stanley Finger, Washington University, St Louis
  • Book: Mark Twain, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, and the Head Readers
  • Online publication: 17 April 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009301251.006
Available formats
×