Through 2008 Mark Twain Project Online was a joint undertaking of the Mark Twain Papers & Project, the California Digital Library, and the University of California Press; it is now produced by the Mark Twain Papers in collaboration with UC Press, with the assistance of UC Berkeley's Library Systems Office. MTPO is funded in part by a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to the Mark Twain Project, and is supported by a number of institutions and individuals.
The Mark Twain Papers are housed in The Bancroft Library at the University of California at Berkeley. The papers comprise not only the world's largest collection of Mark Twain's manuscripts but also letters from his family and friends, facsimiles of manuscripts in other collections, photographs, first and early editions, scholarly works on his life and times, and ephemera.
The Mark Twain Project is dedicated to the identification, verification, collection, preservation, understanding, and dissemination of the works of Mark Twain. Since 1962, the editors have been restoring Mark Twain's original texts, collecting and annotating them for comprehensive editions of all of his private papers and published works. The result: an ever-increasing set of meticulously researched, award-winning critical editions of Mark Twain's works and papers, all published by the University of California Press.
Contributors:
The following have served as the principal editors and architects of MTPO, above and beyond their previous editorial work.
The following have contributed to the essential editorial work published in our printed volumes, on which MTPO is based.
The following names are a partial list of assistant and volunteer contributors.
The following are serving MTPO as its Board of Directors.
The Library Applications & Publishing Group of the UC Berkeley Library
LAP (formerly WPG) has provided valuable infrastructural support to Mark Twain Project Online since 2009.
Contributors:
The California Digital Library (CDL) supports the collection and creative use of the world's scholarship and knowledge for the UC libraries and the communities they serve. CDL offers the UC academic community distinctive services emphasizing stewardship, new publishing modalities, and open-access digital collections with emphasis on the history, society, and cultural treasures of UC, California, and the American West.
The Publishing Services Group of the California Digital Library is home to the University's eScholarship program—a strategic publishing initiative that promotes innovation in scholarly communication by developing and supporting low-cost distribution services and new publishing models for academic publication across the UC system and beyond.
CDL's Publishing Services Group was instrumental in the design and development of the technical infrastructure behind Mark Twain Project Online.
Contributors:
The University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. UC Press is among the six largest university presses in the United States and, of these, is the only one located in the West and associated with a public university.
For more than 35 years, the Mark Twain Project has partnered with UC Press to produce a comprehensive critical edition of Mark Twain's writings. UC Press also owns the exclusive rights to publish copyright-protected content online on Mark Twain Project Online. For information about permissions and copyrights, see Rights and Permissions.
Contributors:
This website could not have been created without the magnificently sustained support of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), an independent federal agency. NEH grants in support of the Mark Twain Project over the last three decades have been matched by private gifts from many sources, the most generous of which we want to thank here.
For their truly extraordinary contributions to the Mark Twain Project we would like to thank the following: The University of California, Berkeley, Class of 1958; Members of the Mark Twain Luncheon Club; The Beatrice Fox Auerbach Foundation Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving; The Barkley Fund; The House of Bernstein, Inc.; Phyllis R. Bogue; Mrs. Helen Kennedy Cahill; J. Kimo Campbell; Robert Paul Corbett; Lawrence E. Crooks; Mrs. Henry Daggett; Lester E. and Mary De Wall; Robert A. Ellsworth; Renée B. Fisher Foundation, Inc.; Ann and David Flinn; Peter and Robin Frazier; Virginia Robinson Furth; Dr. and Mrs. Orville J. Golub; Stephen B. Herrick; Elizabeth and Ira Michael Heyman; The Hofmann Foundation; Hal Holbrook; James M. Hotchkiss, Jr.; The Koret Foundation; Don E. Kosovac; Watson M. and Sita Laetsch; Lynn B. Little; The Mark Twain Foundation; Anne Melbye; Robert and Beverly Middlekauff; Mr. Richard H. Morrison; S. V. Nelson; Jeanne G. O’Brien; Peter K. Oppenheim; Edward H. Peterson; Roger and Jeane Samuelsen; Thomas C. Schneider; Susan Severin; The Benjamin and Susan Shapell Foundation; The Miriam and Harold Steinberg Foundation, Inc.;Willis and Marion Slusser; Bruce Smith; Camilla and George Smith; Randall L. Smith; Janet and Alan Stanford; Jeanne B. and Leonard Ware; Sheila M. Wishek; and Patricia Wright, in memory of Timothy J. Fitzgerald.
For their sustaining gifts over the last ten years, without which we would have been unable to match the NEH grants offered to us in that period, we want to thank especially John B. Adams, Michele Aldrich, Donald L. Allari, Richard and Rita Atkinson, Jerrold J. Bagnani, William B. Baker, Bradley Barber, Donna Lyons Black, Barbara Bowles, Lawrence Brackett, Victor Brady, Barbara Bream, David A. Brown, John B. Bush, Lucy and Donald Campbell, James B. and Missy Cherry, Robert M. and Carol Kavanaugh Clarke, Lawrence H. Cohn, Leonard Collins, Mr. and Mrs. Wilson G. Combs, David E. Conklin, Rolleen S. Connell, The Corona-College Heights Orange and Lemon Association, Judith F. Cortese, Jeanneane H. Cunliffe, James T. Curry, John A. De Luca, Jack and Mary Jane Dold, Dow Chemical, Victor A. Doyno, Mr. and Mrs. Morley S. Farquar, Carol Hart Field, Victoria and Barry Fong, William and Marianne Gagen, Donna M. Garaventa, Caroline Giers, J. Keith Gilless, John and Charlotte Gilmore, William L. Gonser, Robert L. Gray, Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Griffin, Edward and Andrea Hager, Susan K. Harris, Mark W. Heisig, Betty Helmholz, Mrs. W. James Hill, Charles A. Holloway, Elizabeth A. Hook, George J. Houle, Robert Ilko, Proverb G. Jacobs, The James Irvine Foundation, Fred L. Karren, Linda B. Keene, Dennis and Hene Kelly, Holger Kersten, Carol L. King, G. Alan Kingston, Allan Littman, Alexander H. Lucas, Deborah McCabe, John R. McConnell, Mr. Michael Maniccia, Michael J. Marston, Beverly Wagler Matson, Beverly and Fritz Maytag, F. Van Dorn and Carolyn U. Moller, Bruce and Judith Moorad, James and Juanita Moore, Tim Muller, Sharon Niederhaus, Surl Nielsen, John A. Nyheim, Terence J. O’Reilly, Axel Ovregaard, Lorraine Parmer, Garry I. G. Parton, Jack D. Paxton, Scott Pector, Peter T. Peterson, David Wingfield Pettus, Daniel Pinkel, John W. Rhodes, Lila and Neville Rich, Donald D. Roberts, Justine Roberts, Mr. and Mrs. Leigh Robinson, James Ryan, Russ and Carolyn Ryder, Donald A. and Joanne Sandstrom, Jack M. Saroyan, Katherine B. Schwarzenbaach, Wen-Hsing and James Sha, The Shell Oil Company Foundation, Inc., R. S. Sherman, Richard J. Sideman, Leslie E. Simmonds, Michael Sims, David C. Smith, M.D., Catherine R. Spieker, Charles G. and Tracy I. Stephenson, Gretchen Trupiano, Arnie Turrentine, Carol J. Upshaw, Montague M. Upshaw, Carol L. Voss, Maryellen R. Weber, Fred T. Weiss, Ronald G. Wheatcroft, Julie G. White, Charles W. Wolfram, Thomas Edwin and Kyoko Woodhouse, Dave and Diane Wyman, Hassan Y. Yassin, Alvin Ziegler, and Peter and Midge Zischke.
Crucial to encouraging these and many other donors has been the Mark Twain Luncheon Club, conceived and founded by Robert Middlekauff, Watson M. Laetsch, and Chancellor Emeritus Ira Michael Heyman. They, together with the present and former members of the board of directors for the Club—Charles B. Faulhaber, Ann Flinn, Victoria F. Fong, Robin Frazier, Peter E. Hanff, Don E. Kosovac, Roger Samuelsen, Janet Stanford, Elaine Tennant, Catherine and Kent Williams, Thomas Woodhouse, Alvin Ziegler, and Midge Zischke—have utterly transformed the Project’s ability to raise funds. Their collective efforts have ensured that the editors of the Mark Twain Project would be able to offer their long years of experience to the production and maintenance of this website. And they have persuaded many generous donors to contribute both to the operating costs and to an endowment fund to support the Project until its completion. This endowment was created by members of the University of California, Berkeley, Class of 1958, as their 45th- and 50th-year gifts to the University. Its promise of sustained support is unique in the history of the Project. The campaign to fund the endowment, which culminated in 2008, was led by three members of the class: Edward H. Peterson, Roger Samuelsen, and Don E. Kosovac.
For all this generosity, material and otherwise, we are profoundly grateful.
Of equal importance to the success of this endeavor has been the institutional support received from Charles B. Faulhaber, former Director of The Bancroft Library, for database conversion, and from the eScholarship division of the California Digital Library and the University of California Press for the costs of converting our printed volumes to electronic form, as well as most of the costs of building the technical infrastructure on which the site relies. We want to thank both institutions and their former fearless leaders, Catherine Candee and Lynne Withey, respectively.
R.H.H.
December 2012