Can I read Searching for Jim: Slavery in Sam Clemens's World (Volume 1) (Mark Twain and His Circle) on EtoBox?

Searching for Jim: Slavery in Sam Clemens's World (Volume 1) (Mark Twain and His Circle) by Terrell Dempsey is a book available to read on EtoBox.

What is Searching for Jim: Slavery in Sam Clemens's World (Volume 1) (Mark Twain and His Circle) about?

"Searching for Jim" is the untold story of Sam Clemens and the world of slavery that produced him. Despite Clemens's remarks to the contrary in his autobiography, slavery was very much a part of his life. Dempsey has uncovered a wealth of newspaper accounts and archival material revealing that Clemens's life, from the ages of twelve to seventeen, was intertwined with the lives of the slaves around him. During Sam's earliest years, his father, John Marshall Clemens, had significant interaction with slaves. Newly discovered court records show the senior Clemens in his role as justice of the peace in Hannibal enforcing the slave ordinances. With the death of his father, young Sam was apprenticed to learn the printing and newspaper trade. It was in the newspaper that slaves were bought and sold, masters sought runaways, and life insurance was sold on slaves. Stories the young apprentice typeset helped Clemens learn to write in black dialect, a skill he would use throughout his writing, most notably in "Huckleberry Finn. "Missourians at that time feared abolitionists across the border in Illinois and Iowa. Slave owners suspected every traveling salesman, itinerant preacher, or immigrant

Author

Terrell Dempsey

Publisher

University of Missouri Press

Published

2003

Language

EN

ISBN

9780826215932

Subjects

Literary Criticism, History, Biography