SOURCE: “Marietta Holley and Mark Twain: Cultural-Gender Politics and Literary Reputation,” in American Studies, Vol. 39, No. 1, Spring, 1998, pp. 75-91.

In the following essay, Templin traces the similarities between the work of Holley and of Mark Twain, and outlines the reasons for their disparate literary reputations.

Marietta Holley (1836-1926) and Mark Twain (1835-1910) were contemporaries with remarkable similarities. They were not only highly popular writers of comedy in the tradition of the crackerbarrel philosopher, but they also had the same publisher, the same illustrator, and were marketed in the same way—by subscription—to the same public in upstate New York and elsewhere. So comparable were their reputations in their own lifetimes that Twain was reportedly jealous of Holley (Winter 135). Roughly three quarters of a century after their deaths, their posthumous reputations could hardly be more dissimilar. Mark Twain's name and even his image may be known to more...