It's easy to see the part machines play in a project like this one, but if "Mark Twain in His Times" works at all, it's because of the many people who've contributed to it.

The staff of Special Collections at the University of Virginia Library have been consistently cooperative and helpful. I'd like especially to thank Mike Plunkett, Ned Berkeley, Christina Deane and George Riser. Special credit goes to the people who've taken the digital pictures of most of the materials displayed here. The first round of images were captured by Edward Gaynor, Felicia Johnson, Brad Cupp and Becca Yokum. In the Fall, 2007, many of those images were re-shot by the staff of the Library's Digitization Services. In particular I'd like to acknowledge the work of Andrew Curley, Soo Byon, Westley Knight, Jimmy Ko, Ann Lynch and Meredith Hulley.

Throughout the first decade of this project I received a steady supply of help from the staff at the Library's E-Text Center, besides the people listed on the "titlepage" of this site. I'd like especially to thank Stephen Ramsay and Matthew Kirschenbaum. Since then the project has been upgraded and maintained by the Library's Scholars' Lab, under the leadership of Bethany Nowviskie.

Most of the reviews included in the site and a number of other exhibits were collected with the unfailing help of the staff of Alderman Library's Interlibrary Services, especially Lew Purifoy. For his own website on MT's lecture tour with Cable, Scott Holmes did a great job establishing the exact dates of the performances, and finding over a dozen additional reviews -- all of which he has generously shared. Scott Holmes Tom Cole, of Worcester, Massachusetts, digitized and passed along the Gazette's review of Mark Twain's 1871 lecture there.

For help with the digital maps in the site, I need to thank the staff at the Library's Geospatial & Statistical Data Center, including Michael Furlough, Peter Kessler -- and especially Blair Tinker and Robert Griffin.

The examples of Mark Twain's voice were made possible by the assistance of Perry Roland, in the Digital Media and Music Center, at U.Va's Clemons (but not Clemens) Library.

I'm particularly grateful to John Raynor and John F. Kingsley, of the Library Technical Services, for installing the Webinator program that made my aging hope for a searchable site a reality.

Friends and colleagues in the English Department have provided support, assistance, encouragement and advice. I'd like especially to thank Peter Baker, Alan Howard, and Barbara Smith. I'm also indebted to my students, especially the group of beta testers in ENAM 358 Spring 1996 and ENAM 981 Fall 1996. I appreciated their openness, patience and interest -- and their lack of interest was valuable too. Special thanks to undergraduates Michael McFarland and Amy Tarasovic, and graduate students Angel Price, Maureen Riedy and Adriana Rissetto, and JoAnn Schambier and Robert Brown, and former student Brady Earnhart.

Robert Hirst, of the Mark Twain Project at the University of California, has generously shared both material in the MT Papers and the impressive fund of knowledge he carries with him. I also need to acknowledge the encouragement and help of Barbara Schmidt, Taylor Roberts, Terrell Dempsey, and Dave Thomson, all of whom I met, virtually, through the online Mark Twain Forum, and Robert E. Stewart, whom Barbara sent my way. And thanks to Rhio H. Barnhart for sharing the images of his copy of The Boy's King Arthur.

I'm especially grateful to Kevin Mac Donnell, of Mac Donnell Rare Books, Austin, Texas, for contributing to the archive not only items from his wonderful MT collection, but also his expertise and his enthusiasm. You can see his contribution in the SAM CLEMENS AS MARK TWAIN section of the site.

The State of Missouri Department of Natural Resources generously gave permission to use two examples from the manuscript of Tom Sawyer. I want particularly to thank John Josef Huffman, Administrator of the Mark Twain Birthplace State Historic Site, for providing the images. The Boston Public Library generously provided examples of Edward Abbey's Arthurian murals for the Connecticut Yankee section of this archive.

I'd like to dedicate my work on the site to Ben and Annie. You were the ones who led me to computers, and made learning what they could do a labor of love.