"Passionate readers both, Olivia Langdon and Mark Twain courted through books, spelling out their expectations through literary references as they corresponded during their frequent separations. Their letters reveal Olivia Langdon not as a Victorian prude, as many twentieth-century critics have portrayed her, but as a thoughtful intellectual, widely read in literature, history, and modern science. Not surprisingly, the letters show Twain as a critic,...

Introduction by Justin Kaplan. Afterword by Susan K. Harris.