American and British Studies Annual (Dec 2019)
From Murder to Miscegenation: Mark Twain’s Nevada Newspaper Hoaxes
Abstract
Mark Twain’s 21 months as a reporter for the Virginia City, Nevada Territorial-Enterprise (1862-64) were marked by a series of hoaxes that tested even Nevada frontier journalism’s loose standards for accuracy. Close study of these hoaxes in their progression reveals Twain at work on multiple narrative frames, twinned voices, and meta-plots — the stuff of his later fiction.
