<h3>Wonham, Henry B. "'I Want a Real Coon': Twain and Ethnic Caricature." <i>Playing the Races: Ethnic Caricature and American Literary Realism</i>, edited by Henry B. Wonham, Oxford UP, 2004, pp. 69–100.</h3>
<h3>Wonham, Henry B. "'I Want a Real Coon': Twain and Ethnic Caricature." <i>Playing the Races: Ethnic Caricature and American Literary Realism</i>, edited by Henry B. Wonham, Oxford UP, 2004, pp. 69–100.</h3>
<h3>Sonstegard, Adam. "Artistic Liberty and Slave Imagery: 'Mark Twain's Illustrator,' E. W. Kemble, Turns to Harriet Beecher Stowe." <i>Nineteenth-Century Literature</i>, 63, 4, 2009, pp. 499–524.<a href=http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/ncl.2009.63.4.499>🔗</a>.</h3>
<h3>Sonstegard, Adam. "Artistic Liberty and Slave Imagery: 'Mark Twain's Illustrator,' E. W. Kemble, Turns to Harriet Beecher Stowe." <i>Nineteenth-Century Literature</i>, 63, 4, 2009, pp. 499–524.<a href=http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/ncl.2009.63.4.499>🔗</a>.</h3>
<h3>Railton, Stephen. <i>Illustrating <em>Pudd'nhead</em></i>. University of Virginia Library.<a href=https://twain.lib.virginia.edu/wilson/pwillshp.html>🔗</a>.</h3>
<h3>Railton, Stephen. <i>Illustrating <em>Pudd'nhead</em></i>. University of Virginia Library.<a href=https://twain.lib.virginia.edu/wilson/pwillshp.html>🔗</a>.</h3>
<h3>Railton, Stephen. <i>Illustrating Huckleberry Finn: E. W. Kemble</i>. Illustrating Huckleberry Finn.<a href=https://twain.lib.virginia.edu/huckfinn/hucillhp.html>🔗</a>.</h3>
<h3>Railton, Stephen. <i>Illustrating Huckleberry Finn: E. W. Kemble</i>. Illustrating Huckleberry Finn.<a href=https://twain.lib.virginia.edu/huckfinn/hucillhp.html>🔗</a>.</h3>
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<span class="tag">Kemble, Edward W.</span>
<span class="tag">Kemble, Edward W.</span>
<span class="tag">Mark Twain</span>
<span class="tag">Mark Twain</span>
<span class="tag">race and representation</span>
</div>
</div>
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<div class="abstract hidden">
<div class="abstract hidden">
<p>No abstract available.</p>
<p>Mostly set in the American West between 1861 and 1866, Roughing It (1872) is centered on the transformation of Twain’s persona from a greenhorn into a writer and a lecturer. His imagination was driven by mental images that owed a lot to folklore and were conveyed by mainstream iconography and discourse.
Roughing It was published the year when John Gast completed American Progress, also often called “Manifest Destiny”. The image was to become a prominent visual and ideological tool for the promotion of westward advance.
As was the case with other travel books of the period, Roughing It was lavishly adorned; three hundred and four illustrations contributed to its aesthetics and its ideology. The similarities between the frontispiece, “Innocent Dreams” and American Progress suggest common values between national destiny and individual ambition.
This paper starts with a comparative study of American Progress, the original frontispiece of Roughing It and “Innocent Dreams” to delineate the ideological specificity of Twain’s vision. Still relying on the text and its illustrations, it then establishes that Twain’s West is greatly an aesthetic and introspective construct.</p>
<h3>Teutsch, Matthew. <i>Illustrations in "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."</i> Interminable Rambling.<a href=https://interminablerambling.com/2018/10/18/10351/>🔗</a>.</h3>
<h3>Teutsch, Matthew. <i>Illustrations in "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."</i> Interminable Rambling.<a href=https://interminablerambling.com/2018/10/18/10351/>🔗</a>.</h3>
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<span class="tag">Kemble, Edward W.</span>
<span class="tag">Kemble, Edward W.</span>
<span class="tag">Mark Twain</span>
<span class="tag">Mark Twain</span>
<span class="tag">race and representation</span>
</div>
</div>
Revision as of 16:26, 13 July 2026
Relevant Literature
Use the search bar or select one or more tags to find related sources.
Gannon, Susan R. "'200 Rattling Pictures': True Williams and the Imagetext of the First American Edition of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer." The Adventures of Tom Sawyer: Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Contexts, Criticism, edited by Beverly Lyon Clark, Norton, 2007, pp. 353–377.
Mark TwainThe Adventures of Tom Sawyerbook illustrationsWilliams, Truman W.
No abstract available.
- Analysis of chapter headings, vignettes, and page headers, as well as an examination of intertextuality, as Williams adapted motifs from Twain's earlier works for Tom Sawyer.
- Williams' illustrations interact with the text, complementing and ironically commenting on it, creating an image-text relationship; Williams' style aligns with Twain's performative narrative approach and satirical perspective. (p. 365)
Wonham, Henry B. "'I Want a Real Coon': Twain and Ethnic Caricature." Playing the Races: Ethnic Caricature and American Literary Realism, edited by Henry B. Wonham, Oxford UP, 2004, pp. 69–100.
Adventures of Huckleberry Finncaricatures and cartoonsKemble, Edward W.Mark Twainbook illustrationsrace and representation
No abstract available.
Newell, Kate. "'You don't know about me without you have read a book': Authenticity in Adaptations of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." Literature/Film Quarterly, 41, 4, 2013, pp. 303–316.
Adventures of Huckleberry FinnKemble, Edward W.Mark Twainbook illustrations
No abstract available.
Holt, Elvin. "A Coon Alphabet and the Comic Mask of Racial Prejudice." Studies in American Humor, 5, Winter, 1986, pp. 307–318.
Kemble, Edward W.illustrationsrace and representation
No abstract available.
Sonstegard, Adam. "Artistic Liberty and Slave Imagery: 'Mark Twain's Illustrator,' E. W. Kemble, Turns to Harriet Beecher Stowe." Nineteenth-Century Literature, 63, 4, 2009, pp. 499–524.🔗.
Adventures of Huckleberry FinnKemble, Edward W.Mark Twainbook illustrationsrace and representation
No abstract available.
Leonard, James S. et al. Author-ity and Textuality: Current Views of Collaborative Writing. Locust Hill, 1994.
authorshipcollaboration
No abstract available.
Pereira, Nilce M. "Book Illustration as (Intersemiotic) Translation: Pictures Translating Words." Meta, 53, 1, 2008, pp. 104–119.🔗.
Adventures of Huckleberry FinnMark Twainbook illustrations
No abstract available.
Kinghorn, Norton D. "E. W. Kemble's Misplaced Modifier: A Note on the Illustrations for Huckleberry Finn." Mark Twain Journal, 16, 4, 1973, pp. 9–11.🔗.
Adventures of Huckleberry FinnKemble, Edward W.Mark Twainbook illustrations
No abstract available.
Railton, Stephen. Illustrating Pudd'nhead. University of Virginia Library.🔗.
Kemble, Edward W.Mark TwainPudd'nhead Wilsonrace and representation
No abstract available.
Railton, Stephen. Illustrating Huckleberry Finn: E. W. Kemble. Illustrating Huckleberry Finn.🔗.
Adventures of Huckleberry FinnKemble, Edward W.Mark Twainrace and representation
No abstract available.
Mark Twain in His Times Project. Accessed 19 February 2026.
Dumas, Frédéric. "Illustration and Imagination: Mark Twain’s Roughing It and John Gast’s American Progress." ILCEA, 43, June, 2021, pp. 1–19.🔗.
Mark TwainRoughing Itbook illustrations
Mostly set in the American West between 1861 and 1866, Roughing It (1872) is centered on the transformation of Twain’s persona from a greenhorn into a writer and a lecturer. His imagination was driven by mental images that owed a lot to folklore and were conveyed by mainstream iconography and discourse.
Roughing It was published the year when John Gast completed American Progress, also often called “Manifest Destiny”. The image was to become a prominent visual and ideological tool for the promotion of westward advance.
As was the case with other travel books of the period, Roughing It was lavishly adorned; three hundred and four illustrations contributed to its aesthetics and its ideology. The similarities between the frontispiece, “Innocent Dreams” and American Progress suggest common values between national destiny and individual ambition.
This paper starts with a comparative study of American Progress, the original frontispiece of Roughing It and “Innocent Dreams” to delineate the ideological specificity of Twain’s vision. Still relying on the text and its illustrations, it then establishes that Twain’s West is greatly an aesthetic and introspective construct.
- Comparative iconographic and structural analysis of visual elements to identify ideological differences.
- Twain's West = an aesthetic and introspective space; a connection between individual ambition and the ideology of Manifest Destiny, presented, as is typical of Twain, from a humorous perspective. (p. 4)
Teutsch, Matthew. Illustrations in "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." Interminable Rambling.🔗.
Adventures of Huckleberry FinnKemble, Edward W.Mark Twainrace and representation
No abstract available.
Barclay, Donald A. "Interpreted Well Enough: Two Illustrators' Visions of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." Horn Book Magazine, 68, May, 1992, pp. 311–319.
Adventures of Huckleberry FinnKemble, Edward W.Mark Twainbook illustrations
No abstract available.
- Analysis of the illustrations' formal characteristics (format, placement and number) and examination of their narrative functions, including how they guide the reader and establish mood.
- Kemble's sketch-like style reflects the novel's naïve narrator while still providing sufficient depth to convey character, emotion, and action. (p. 313)
- Kemble's illustrations are at times overtly racist, though they more often express subtler forms of racism; at the same time, they also include "noble" and "heroic" depictions of Jim. (p. 315)
- Moser presents a considerably more positive and heroic image of Jim, while his illustrations are generally much darker in tone than Kemble's. (p. 315)
Briden, Earl F. "Kemble's 'Specialty' and the Pictorial Countertext of Huckleberry Finn." Mark Twain Journal, 26, 2, 1988, pp. 2–14.
Adventures of Huckleberry FinnKemble, Edward W.Mark Twainbook illustrationscaricatures and cartoons
No abstract available.
- Comparison of Kemble's Huckleberry Finn illustrations with his magazine cartoons, highlighting the "obvious stylistic consistency," exaggerated features and postures, and processes of "racial abstraction."
- Examination of the illustrations' production process, including Kemble's use of a white model for all characters.
- Kemble's illustrations as a pictorial countertext: Jim is reduced to a comic stereotype, suggesting that Twain "sold Jim down the river." (p. 12)
Inge, M. Thomas. "Mark Twain and Dan Beard's Collaborative Connecticut Yankee." Author-ity and Textuality: Current Views of Collaborative Writing, edited by James S. Leonard et al., Locust Hill, 1994, pp. 169–227.🔗.
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's CourtMark Twainbook illustrations
No abstract available.
David, Beverly R. Mark Twain and His Illustrators. Whitston, 1986.
book illustrationsMark Twain
No abstract available.
David, Beverly R. Mark Twain and His Illustrators. Whitston, 2001.
book illustrationsMark Twain
No abstract available.
David, Beverly R. "Mark Twain and the Legends for Huckleberry Finn." American Literary Realism, 15, 12, 1982, pp. 155–165.🔗.
Adventures of Huckleberry FinnKemble, Edward W.Mark Twainbook illustrationscaptions
No abstract available.
- Comparison of working titles and published titles (subtitles/legends of illustrations).
- Twain extensively revised Kemble's captions in order to optimize humor, dialect, and synchronization with the narrative. (p. 162)
Pudd'nhead WilsonMark Twainbook illustrationsSenior, Frank M.Warren, Calvin H.
No abstract available.
<strong>Edward Windsor Kemble, Illustrator</strong>
<table>
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<td>
<strong>Edward Windsor Kemble</strong> (b. 1861 - d. 1933) <br>was born in Sacramento, California, the son of Edward Cleveland Kemble who founded the <em>San Francisco Alta California</em>. His first attempts at drawing were those of Indians drawn when he was about eleven years old and traveling with his father throughout the West. In the winter of 1880-1881 he attended class in New York at the Art Students' League. After that brief stint, Kemble became largely self-taught and obtained a job as a cartoonist at New York's <em>Daily Graphic</em>. When <em>Life </em>magazine was founded in 1883 he became a contributor to that publication. When Clemens saw some of his Negro drawings in <em>Life</em> magazine, he recruited him to illustrate the first edition of <em>Huckleberry Finn</em>. After the success of <em>Huckleberry Finn</em>, <em>Century</em> magazine made him an offer for all of his work outside of book publications. He remained with <em>Century</em> until 1891. Kemble died in 1933 with a lengthy list of book illustration work to his credit.
In a letter from Kemble to Frank Bliss dated May 16, 1898, Kemble told Bliss he would be happy to join the "goodly company" of artists and provide illustrations for "a volume of Mark Twain." Bliss had also awarded Kemble the illustrating assignment for the 1899 edition of <em>Adventures of Huckleberry Finn</em>. For <em>Pudd'nhead Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins</em>, Kemble provided six new full-page pictures to illustrate the <em>Pudd'nhead Wilson</em> chapters of the book.
One of Kemble's illustrations titled "Buckstone Training with the Rum Party" was hand-colored and used as the frontispiece for the 1901 <a href="http://www.twainquotes.com/UniformEds/UniformEdsCh4-f.html" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Riverdale Edition</a>.
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Kemble's previous style of depicting black people as unattractive caricatures was unchanged throughout <em>Pudd'nhead Wilson</em>. His drawings of the central character Roxy, who was only 1/16 black, depict a less attractive woman than the illustrations of her by <a href="http://www.twainquotes.com/Roxy.html" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Louis Loeb which had appeared in the </a><em><a href="http://www.twainquotes.com/Roxy.html" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Century Magazine</a></em> serialization. Kemble's image would be the one presented to the greatest number of American readers for years to come and one illustration in particular became the source of scholarly misidentification and misinterpretation.
The 1899 edition of <em>Pudd'nhead Wilson</em> features two illustrations of Roxy, both in the company of blacks. In 1901 American Publishing Company authorized the <a href="http://www.twainquotes.com/UniformEds/UniformEdsCh4-e.html" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Underwood Edition</a> which contained fewer illustrations. Only one illustration of Roxy was used and it was featured prominently as a frontispiece. The decision to present the below illustration as the first one a reader would see was repeated by Harper and Brothers in subsequent uniform editions. It has been a source of misunderstanding for critics who were not adept at reading the picture and who never had an opportunity to see Kemble's other illustration of Roxy.One of the most prominent Mark Twain scholars to criticize Kemble for misinterpretating Mark Twain's work was Leslie Fiedler. In Fiedler's review titled "As Free as Any Cretur..." published in <em>The New Republic</em> in August 1955 he wrote that the image of Roxy that Twain created was "a portrait so complex and unforeseen that the baffled illustrator for the authorized standard edition chose to ignore it completely, drawing in the place of a 'majestic...rosy...comely' Roxana--a gross and comic Aunt Jemima."
In 1987 Martha Banta followed Fiedler's lead in her work <em>Imaging American Women: Idea and Ideals in Cultural History </em>writing:
<blockquote>
Kemble did not draw the Roxy Mark Twain portrays. He set down the accepted fictions, "the orthodox opinions," governing turn-of-the-century identification of inferior racial types. A stroke of Kemble's pen wipes out the verbal irony by which Mark Twain set up cross-currents among what Roxy looks like, her bottom-nature, and the racial tag placed upon her by society (Banta, p. 182).
</blockquote>
One of the most cogent discussions of the Kemble misinterpretations is by Werner Sollors in his essay "Was Roxy Black?" published in <em>Mixed Race Literature</em> (2002), edited by Jonathan Brennan. Sollors suggests that Kemble may have "hidden" Roxy in "Harvesting Among the Kitchens" as a conscious way of honoring Mark Twain's sentence "From Roxy's manner of speech, a stranger would have expected her to be black, but she was not" (Brennan, p. 82). As a result of publishing decisions to cut illustrations, a number of readers have been guilty of their own hasty stereotyping when glancing at the Kemble frontispiece. No evidence has been found that Mark Twain commented on the usage of "Roxy Harvesting Among the Kitchens" as a frontispiece for the Underwood or subsequent Harper editions. The ensuing controversy the illustration caused is one that he would likely have enjoyed.
Further discussion of Kemble's illustrations is available online at the University of Virginia website in an article titled "<a href="http://etext.virginia.edu/railton/wilson/pwillshp.html" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Illustrating Pudd'nhead</a>."
Wonham, Henry B. Playing the Races: Ethnic Caricature and American Literary Realism. Oxford UP, 2004.
Adventures of Huckleberry Finncaricatures and cartoonsKemble, Edward W.Mark Twainbook illustrations
No abstract available.
Introduction: the age of caricature, the age of realism -- William Dean Howells and the touch of exaggeration which typifies -- "I want a real coon": Twain and ethnic caricature -- A Jamesian art to be cultivated -- Edith Wharton's flamboyant copy -- The "curious realism" of Charles Chesnutt
David, Beverly R., and Ray Sapirstein. "Reading the Illustrations in Huckleberry Finn." Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, edited by Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Oxford UP, 1996, pp. 33–40.
Kemble, Edward W.Adventures of Huckleberry Finnbook illustrationsMark Twain
No abstract available.
Scholarly material added to the back of this edition of the novel; separate pagination from the main text
Anderson, Douglas. "Reading the Pictures of Huckleberry Finn." Arizona Quarterly, 42, Summer, 1986, pp. 101–118.
Adventures of Huckleberry FinnKemble, Edward W.book illustrationsMark Twain
No abstract available.
Source: Bibliography in Francis Martin, J R ., “To Ignore Is to Deny: E. W. Kemble’s Racial Caricature as Popular Art”
Adventures of Huckleberry FinnKemble, Edward W.Mark Twain
No abstract available.
Martin, Adam. See "Edward Ardizzone's Lost 'Huck Finn' Illustrations." The Atlantic, 12 May 2011.🔗.
Adventures of Huckleberry FinnMark Twain
Drawings done by the English artist in 1970 were found in a publisher's desk
Drawings done by the English artist in 1970 were found in a publisher's desk
Nölle-Fischer, Karen. "Selling Mark Twain’s Connecticut Yankee in America: Marketing and Illustrations." Revue française d’études américaines, 17, 1, 1983, pp. 265–282.🔗.
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's CourtMark Twainbook illustrations
No abstract available.
Clark, Beverly Lyon. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer: Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Contexts, Criticism. Norton, 2007.
The Adventures of Tom SawyerMark Twain
No abstract available.
Includes bibliographical references
Boime, Albert. The Art of Exclusion: Representing Blacks in the Nineteenth Century. Smithsonian, 1990.🔗.
untagged
No abstract available.
Source: Bibliography in Francis Martin, Jr., "To Ignore Is to Deny: E. W. Kemble’s Racial Caricature as Popular Art"
Railton, Stephen. The Evasion Will be Illustrated. Illustrating Huckleberry Finn.🔗.
Mark TwainAdventures of Huckleberry Finnbook illustrations
No abstract available.
Anspaugh, Kelly. "The Innocent Eye? E. W. Kemble's Illustrations to Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." American Literary Realism, 25, 2, 1993, pp. 16–30.🔗.
Adventures of Huckleberry FinnKemble, Edward W.Mark Twainbook illustrationscaptions
No abstract available.
- Reconstruction of the historical context, with references to Kemble's broader career as an illustrator, as well as to Hearn, Briden, Sioui, and others; consideration of conversations between Twain and Kemble/Webster.
- Analysis of captions, individual illustrations, and specific visual elements (e.g., the wooden leg). - Illustrations as a marketing tool for subscription sales: making a "rough" book acceptable to a middle-class audience through the work of the "beauty artist." (pp. 17–18)
- Both Twain and Kemble often conveyed truth indirectly ("tell it slant"). (p. 21)
- The "erotic" (i.e., carnigraphic) elements in the illustrations are more likely attributable to Twain than to Kemble. (p. 21)
- Reconstruction of the historical context, with references to Kemble's broader career as an illustrator, as well as to Hearn, Briden, Sioui, and others; consideration of conversations between Twain and Kemble/Webster.
- Analysis of captions, individual illustrations, and specific visual elements (e.g., the wooden leg).
Gneiting, Teona T. "The Pencil's Role in Vanity Fair." Huntington Library Quarterly, 39, 2, 1976, pp. 171–202.🔗.
book illustrations
No abstract available.
Not directly relevant for illustrations in MarK Twain’s work
David, Beverly R. "The Pictorial Huck Finn: Mark Twain and His Illustrator, E. W. Kemble." American Quarterly, 26, 4, 1974, pp. 331–351.
Adventures of Huckleberry FinnKemble, Edward W.Mark Twainbook illustrations
No abstract available.
- Analysis of the correspondence between Twain, his publisher Webster and Kemble, as well as image-text analysis (e.g. the Grangerford feud).
- Twain used illustrations to shape and manipulate readers' responses and to soften the impact of violence and ugliness. (p. 338)
David, Beverly R. "The Relationship of Kemble’s Illustrations to Mark Twain’s Text: Using Pictures to Teach Huck Finn." Making Mark Twain Work in the Classroom, edited by James S. Leonard, Duke UP, 1999, pp. 216–229.🔗.
Adventures of Huckleberry FinnKemble, Edward W.A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's CourtThe Innocents Abroadbook illustrationsMark Twain
No abstract available.
Martin, Francis, Jr. "To Ignore Is to Deny: E. W. Kemble’s Racial Caricature as Popular Art." Journal of Popular Culture, 40, 4, 2007, pp. 655–682.
Adventures of Huckleberry FinnKemble, Edward W.Mark Twainbook illustrations
No abstract available.
Sollors, Werner, and Brennan, Jonathan. "Was Roxy Black? Race as Stereotype in Mark Twain, Edward Windsor Kemble and Paul Laurence Dunbar." Mixed Race Literature, edited by Jonathan Brennan, Stanford UP, 2002, pp. 70–87.