Early this month, The
New Yorker published an article entitled, “The Complicated Backstory To a
New Children’s Book by Mark Twain.” The book in question has the rather
unwieldy—but very 19th century—title, The Purloining of Prince Oleomargarine
(c.1879). Now before you get too excited, expecting something along the lines
of Tom Sawyer or The Prince and the Pauper, here are the facts:
sixteen pages of notes were unearthed by a scholar at the Bancroft Library in
Berkeley, notes which were not a finished story but a mere outline of a
tale Twain used to entertain his daughters. Worse yet, the outline was
unfinished. The scholar who uncovered it, John Bird, stood face-to-face with
the find of a career. But what should he do with it? Publish it as is, perhaps
in a journal article with contextual notes about the circumstances of its
composition, its relation to other stories in his canon, etc.? Or actually
complete and flesh out the sketch, so that everyone could enjoy a forgotten
piece of the Twain puzzle—incomplete and insubstantial though it is?
