November – The Peterson Magazine, V p.1159-64 ran Ellen A. Vinton’s article, “Who Are Our American Humorists?”: “The most popular of all our humorists, Mark Twain…has acquired both education and literary culture, and has shown himself capable of success in a wider field of literature than the one he has chosen to fill” [Tenney, ALR supplement to the Reference Guide (Autumn, 1979) 184].

The Chatauquan, XXII p.160-4 ran Stuart P. Sherman’s article, “American Humorists.” Mark Twain as “the greatest of American humorists, popularly so-called….he is in a degree higher than the rest something more than a funmaker.” No mere clown, punster, or preposterous speller, “he is only an interpreter of life and men, not as Holmes, through culture, for that has been denied him, but through experience. He tells light things formally, and formal things lightly, and these make up his method. At his best we always find something sound at bottom that lasts beyond the moment” [Tenney, ALR supplement to the Reference Guide (Autumn, 1980) 173].