Literary Landmark: Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum
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Hannibal, Mo.
Dedicated: April 24, 2010
Partners: Missouri Humanities Council, ReadMOre Missouri, Hannibal Free Public Library
The Literary Landmark dedication of the Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum featured a performance by Dr. George Frein, distinguished scholar and living presenter who, as Mark Twain, talked about his life as a Mississippi River pilot. Dr. Frein also fielded questions from the audience afterwards, again as Twain.
The Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum includes six properties that are on the National Register of Historic Places (including his boyhood home, which was built in the 1840s and opened to the public in 1912), and two interactive museums. Twain lived in Hannibal from age 4 to 17. The experiences that Samuel Clemens took from Hannibal became part of American culture through his writings as Mark Twain.
The dedication was part of the Year of Mark Twain. The year 2010 marks the 175th anniversary of Twain’s birth, the 125th anniversary of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , and the 100th anniversary of Twain’s death. As part of the celebration, ReadMOre Missouri, the statewide program that invites Missourians to join in a statewide read, chose four of Twain’s short stories for libraries to read statewide:
The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,
The £1,000,000 Bank Note,
The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and
The Mysterious Stranger.
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