Ransom Center Magazine

Research + Teaching

A Twain treasure hunt

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Alan Gribben has spent almost 50 years hunting down Mark Twain’s formidable personal library, which housed more than 3,000 titles. In the first volume of his findings, Mark Twain’s Literary Resources: A Reconstruction of His Library and Reading (NewSouth Books, 2019), Gribben presents the discoveries of his life’s work, uncovering Twain’s favorite books as well as his “Library of Literary Hogwash.” Gribben then takes a fresh look at Twain’s writing with an eye towards the influences of the author’s personal reading. [Read more…] about A Twain treasure hunt

Central Texas to west Texas and beyond

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“What do the books smell like?” asked one of my students. In my Shakespeare class at West Texas A&M University, we must use the internet as our rare book room. Our institution could never afford the kinds of specialized resources we use every week online: my students can easily flip through digitized Shakespeare quartos, see performance clips and stills, and trawl through databases of historical records. [Read more…] about Central Texas to west Texas and beyond

Researcher publications

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Ernest Hemingway: A Biography
Mary V. Dearborn Knopf, 2017

A revelatory look into the life and work of Ernest Hemingway. Dearborn’s biography gives a rich and nuanced portrait of this complex, enigmatically unique American artist, whose same uncontrollable demons that inspired and drove him throughout his life undid him at the end. Dearborn was the recipient of a Harry Ransom Center research fellowship supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Research Fellowship Endowment. [Read more…] about Researcher publications