Aquarium: The Samuel Clemens Angelfish Correspondence 1905-10

by Mark Twain, John R. Cooley (Editor)

"What I lacked and what I needed," confessed Samuel Clemens in 1908, "was grandchildren." Near the end of his life, Clemens became the doting friend and correspondent of twelve schoolgirls ranging in age from ten to sixteen. For Clemens, "collecting" these surrogate granddaughters was a way of overcoming his loneliness, a respite from the pessimism, illness, and depression that dominated his later years. In Mark Twain's Aquarium, John Cooley brings together virtually every known communication exchanged between the writer and the girls he called his "angelfish." Cooley also includes a number of Clemens's notebook entries, autobiographical dictations, short manuscripts, and other relevant materials that further illuminate this fascinating story. Clemens relished the attention of these girls, orchestrating chaperoned visits to his homes and creating an elaborate set of rules and emblems for the Aquarium Club. He hung their portraits in his billiard room and inv

Genres: Memoir

352 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist and essayist. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced," with William Faulkner calling him "the father of American literature." His novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), with the latter often called the "Great American Novel." Twain also wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) and Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894), and co-wrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) with Charles Dudley Warner.

Reviews

[Lydia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Editor John Cooley offers the surviving correspondence between Samuel Clemens (Twain) and a group of young girls he called his Angelfish. The letters, written between 1905 and 1910, depict a Lonely man, craving company, entertainment and the company of pseudo-granddaughters. Cooley does a good job of setting up each grouping of letters to give them context. And in doing so, he offers a look into Clemens' life at Stormfield in Redding, CT. I recommend this to anyone with an interest in the man and what made him tick.