Friday, April 22, 2022

USPS Mark Twain

USPS on 25 June 2011 honoured acclaimed author and humorist Mark Twain with the issuance of a commemorative Forever postage stamp in the city that served as the setting for two of his most famous works. A first-day-of-issue ceremony was held 25 June at the Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum in Hannibal, Missouri.

The postage stamp portrait shows Twain as an older man; the steamboat in the background evokes a way of life along the Mississippi River that played a huge role in many of Twain’s works, as well as in his own life. Art director and stamp designer Phil Jordan collaborated with stamp artist Gregory Manchess, who based his portrait of Twain on a photograph taken around 1907.

Mark Twain (1835—1910), is the author of beloved works such as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. His Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is widely considered one of the greatest novels in American literature. In this tale of an abused boy and a runaway slave who become friends while riding a raft down the Mississippi River, Twain addressed issues of race and racism in America with a frankness that is still startling more than a100 years later. Born Samuel Clemens, Mark Twain took his name from his time working as a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi.

Mark Twain  (to quote from his book "Roughing It" ) has been "as flat as a postage stamp" before; he was on a 1940 stamp that cost 10 cents.  "Forever" stamps, which cost the price of a first class-mail stamp -- 44 cents -- can be used even if the price of a first-class mail stamp changes. Even, ostensibly, for another 100 years.

Talk 100 years, Twain had a surprise hit in 2010 when his massive "Autobiography of Mark Twain" was published. As instructed, the author's memoirs had been held for a century after his death, but no one expected them to be a bestseller -- except, maybe, Mark Twain. "Autobiography of Mark Twain," a whopping 736 pages, was only volume one -- two more volumes of his memoirs were on the way from the University of California Press, tentatively scheduled for 2012 and 2014.

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