Every author as prolific as Mark Twain needs a critical reference volume, and, despite its narrow approach, Henry Nash Smith's Mark Twain: The Development of a Writer (1962) does offer at least some critical commentary on all the books and stories in the 481d syllabus. The book offers a chronological, work-by-work account of Samuel Clemens' career as Mark Twain. Smith argues from the start of his volume that Clemens defined Twain's authorial character as one who struggled between the conventional assumptions of his time and a need to debunk those assumptions. As we have noted in class, Twain's work can be divided into semi-fictional travel narratives and full-length novels or stories. As Smith proceeds through Twain's career, he notes how the author changes his mood from one of anecdotal humor to one of bitter, less humorous satire.

Smith's analysis of The Innocents Abroad and Roughing It provides excellent reference material for students interested in learning about the author in his times. Smith focuses on the ways in which Clemens developed a narrative voice for Twain, with the help of Mrs. Fairbanks, his first "editor." There seems to exist a clear struggle in the mind of the author over how best to express his opinions about nineteenth-century standards of behavior without being so offensive as to lose his audience. Smith argues that, in order to seem less abrasive, Clemens created in Twain a perceptive but naïve speaker, capable of both sharp witticism and blundering slapstick humor. As the West becomes this author's subject, audiences see him grow up and become more refined, and, Smith argues, they become ready to hear him tell vernacular stories in vernacular language. As we know, Twain's first attempt to do this came in "Old Times on the Mississippi," a work that marked for Clemens a turning point in subject matter and in editorship (Howells became his mentor and collaborator). Twain's approach to what Smith calls "The Matter of the River" and "The Matter of Hannibal" begins with this serial recollection. It is at this time that he finally manages to become both the societal member and the social critic all at once.

Before discussing Twain's fiction in depth, Smith makes a brief detour to recount a famous and somewhat unsuccessful speech that Twain gave, satirizing Longfellow, Emerson, and others at the seventieth birthday celebration of John Greenleaf Whittier. This section appears worth review because it shows extensively how the author walked the line between crude humorist and serious man of letters. Smith, in spending an entire chapter on this event, urges his readers to see Twain as struggling, like many of his characters, to make sense of his place in an established society.

"The Matter of Hannibal" consumes what Smith clearly views as Twain's most successful period: the nine years that saw the publication of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. The books contain two sharply different narrators, and, according to Smith, the shift from third- to first-person speakers meant for Twain a shift from easygoing humor to harder, biting social commentary. At this point in his review of Twain's development, Smith gives less reference to the author's reception in his times, although he does cite a few reviews, mostly by Howells (obviously biased). As his career progresses, Twain continues to turn to the canvas of the past in order to comment on the present, with books like A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and Smith believes that, as his comments became more heated and controversial, his work suffered.

Twain's Development, according to Smith, seems like a literary rise and fall, for, though works like A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and Puddn'head Wilson contain a multitude of interesting critical angles, they do not seem to have the revolutionary narrative completeness of Huckleberry Finn. I believe that Smith's point about the dual nature of Twain the narrator, as both a part and a critic of society, holds significant weight. If we are studying Mark Twain as a creation of Samuel Clemens, then Smith's book makes a wonderful reference. I must suggest that readers who approach it find other arguments and sources about the author for comparison and perspective.