Anson Burlingame’s Influence on Mark Twain, Oct. 18, 2026, 2 PM
Join us for our Quarterly Event: Anson Burlingame's Influence on Mark Twain Sunday, Oct. 18 at 2pm Community Center Maple Room Anson Burlingame played an outsized but little-noticed role in making Mark Twain the writer he became. In this talk, Stanford professor and Twain scholar Shelley Fisher Fishkin will trace the history of that relationship and note the ways in which Burlingame helped Twain become more than “the wild humorist of the Pacific Slope.” Mark Twain would eulogize Burlingame after his death as a “citizen of the world.” This talk will chart how Burlingame modeled for Twain how to be a “citizen of the world” himself, as well as a serious writer. It will conclude by discussing Fishkin’s latest book—Jim: The Life and Afterlives of Huckleberry Finn’s Comrade— a book which demonstrates the significance of Twain’s intervention in the cultural conversation in his world and in our own. The book will be available for sale at the event. Shelley Fisher Fishkin is the Joseph S. Atha Professor of Humanities. Professor of English and (by courtesy) of African and African American Studies at Stanford University.
