Mark Twain and Dickens

WHAT is … difficult to understand is his lack of appreciation for Dickens.“1 William Lyon Phelps's belief that Mark Twain had been one of those rarest of nineteenth-century creatures, the writer who had had no interest in Dickens and who had avoided his influence, was shared by most Mark Twain critics for many years. Although writers like Minnie M. Brashear, who sided with Bernard DeVoto in the Brooks-DeVoto controversy, often pointed out that Clemens had been frequently exposed to Dickens' works, the consensus was stated by Stephen Lea-cock when he remarked that while Mark Twain and Dickens are undoubtedly the two greatest humorists of the nineteenth century, ”there is no record, and no internal evidence, to show that either was influenced by the work of the other.“2 Recently there have been signs of a shift in critical opinion concerning Mark Twain's relationship to Dickens. Walter Blair has shown the indisputable influence of A Tale of Two Cities on Mark Twain's masterpiece.3 Ada Nisbet's survey of Dickens research calls for further study of the ”promising subject“ of Clemens' indebtedness to Dickens, and in a recent review Ellen Moers has suggested at least one direction such a study might take.4