Mark Twain in the margins

"Fulton analyzes Twain's voluminous marginalia in the copies of Macaulay's History of England, Carlyle's The French Revolution, and Lecky's Spirit of Rationalism and England in the Eighteenth Century, available to Twain in the library of Quarry Farm, the New York retreat where the novelist and his family routinely spent their summers. Comparing these marginal notes to entries in Twain's writing journal, the manuscript of Connecticut Yankee, and the book as published in 1889, Fulton establishes that Twain's research decisively influenced the novel. Fulton reveals Twain to be both the writer from experience he claimed to be and the careful craftsman that he attempted to downplay. By redefining Twain's aesthetic, Fulton reinvigorates current debates about what constitutes literary realism."--BOOK JACKET.