When one considers Samuel Langhorne Clemens's life and writings, the role of literary critic is hardly the first category that comes to mind. Yet in the course of his career he compiled a large body of comment--in essays, sketches, reviews, and informal statements on language and literature. In addition, Clemens's comments on literature abound in interviews, letters, and, both explicitly and implicitly, in his works themselves.

Allied, with those who have been called "Critical Realists," Clemens derived his literary opinions primarily from his own actual practice and from his reactions to what he read, rather than from any formal theoretical or philosophical basis. He presented his critical judgments less fully or formally than his fellow authors William Dean Howells and Henry James, the two other major voices of nineteenth-century American literary realism. Intellectually a realist, he was also a romantic. In his best works he looked nostalgically back--not...