Come Enjoy The High-Spirited Life on the Mississippi: The Musical! Direct from New York!

Hartford, Connecticut - The Mark Twain House & Museum and the Workshop Theater Company present the exciting new musical play Life on the Mississippi for two performances only--on Friday, December 13 at 7:00 p.m., and Saturday, December 14 at 2:00 p.m. in the Mark Twain House Museum Center.

Currently running Off-Broadway at Workshop Theater Company, this new production comes direct to Hartford!  It's a musical version of Mark Twain's classic memoir Life on the Mississippi.  Hair-raising, hilarious, life-changing and violent are just some of the currents that steamboat pilot Sam Clemens has to navigate in this musical journey.  Young Sam Clemens and his brother Henry step onto a Mississippi steamboat and aboard the chance of a lifetime.  As a cub apprentice, his burning ambition propels him to become a steamboat pilot, but he soon discovers that learning the great, relentless river will be harder than he ever imagined.  Now Sam must plot a course through the dangerous currents, as mysterious as the Mississippi itself.  Book, Music & Lyrics by Philip W. Hall.  Directed by Susanna Frazer. Presented by the Workshop Theater Company.

Seating is first-come/first-served.  Free-will offering accepted.  This special presentation is a benefit for The Mark Twain House & Museum.

"Ninety-five minutes I wished would NEVER end!" - Bloomberg Radio

"Four stars!  A humble piece of theater that somehow summons the wide picture of life on the Mississippi river." - Examiner.com

Sponsored by First Niagara Foundation.

The Mark Twain House & Museum (www.marktwainhouse.org ) has restored the author's Hartford, Connecticut, home, where the author and his family lived from 1874 to 1891. Twain wrote his most important works during the years he lived there, including Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.

In addition to providing tours of Twain's restored home, a National Historic Landmark, the institution offers activities and educational programs that illuminate Twain's literary legacy and provide information about his life and times.

The house and museum at 351 Farmington Ave. are open Monday through Saturday, 9:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m., and Sunday, noon-5:30 p.m.  For more information, call 860-247-0998 or visit www.marktwainhouse.org.

Programs at The Mark Twain House & Museum are made possible in part by support from the Connecticut Department of Economic & Community Development, Office of the Arts, and the Greater Hartford Arts Council's United Arts Campaign.

Learn about the mystery of Empty Mansions with author Bill Dedman

Hartford, Connecticut - The Mark Twain House & Museum presents an exciting evening with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Bill Dedman who will discuss his New York Times bestseller Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune, coauthored by Paul Clark Newell, Jr.  This event takes place on Tuesday, December 17, at 7:00 p.m. in the Mark Twain House Museum Center.

In 2009, when Bill Dedman noticed a grand home in New Caanan, Connecticut for sale, unoccupied for nearly sixty years, he stumbled through a surprising portal into American history. Empty Mansions is a rich mystery of wealth and loss, connecting the Gilded Age opulence of the nineteenth century with a twenty-first-century battle over a $300 million inheritance.  At its heart is a reclusive heiress named Huguette Clark, a woman so secretive that, at the time of her death at age 104, no new photograph of her had been seen in decades.  Though she owned palatial homes in California, New York, and Connecticut, why had she lived for twenty years in a simple hospital room, despite being in excellent health?  Why were her valuables being sold off?  Was she in control of her fortune, or controlled by those managing her money?  Come learn more about these mysteries and meet the author for a book signing after his talk.

About The Author: Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Bill Dedman's series of stories about the Clarks became the most popular feature in the history of NBC's news web site, topping 105 million page views. Bill is an investigative reporter for NBC. He received the 1989 Pulitzer Prize in investigative reporting for his work for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He got his start in journalism at age 16 as a copy boy at The Chattanooga Times, and has written for The Boston Globe, The Washington Post and The New York Times.

This is a free event.  A book signing with the author will follow.

Sponsored by The Hartford.

The Mark Twain House & Museum (www.marktwainhouse.org ) has restored the author's Hartford, Connecticut, home, where the author and his family lived from 1874 to 1891. Twain wrote his most important works during the years he lived there, including Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.

In addition to providing tours of Twain's restored home, a National Historic Landmark, the institution offers activities and educational programs that illuminate Twain's literary legacy and provide information about his life and times.

The house and museum at 351 Farmington Ave. are open Monday through Saturday, 9:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m., and Sunday, noon-5:30 p.m.  For more information, call 860-247-0998 or visit www.marktwainhouse.org.

Programs at The Mark Twain House & Museum are made possible in part by support from the Connecticut Department of Economic & Community Development, Office of the Arts, and the Greater Hartford Arts Council's United Arts Campaign.

National Geographic Names the Mark Twain House One of the Ten Best Historic Homes in the World

Hartford, Connecticut - The Mark Twain House in Hartford, Connecticut has been named one of the ten best historic houses in the world in a publication of the National Geographic Society.

The third edition of National Geographic Books' The Ten Best of Everything, edited by Nathaniel Lande and Andrew Lande, lists the house that Samuel L. Clemens and Olivia Langdon Clemens built, and where the family lived from 1874 to 1891, among such buildings as Leo Tolstoy's house in Russia, The Churchills' Blenheim Palace in England, and artist Claude Monet's home, Giverny, in France.

The only other American buildings on the list are Thomas Jefferson's Monticello and George Washington's Mount Vernon.

 "We are very glad to have been named to this list of buildings of international importance," said Patti Philippon, Interim Executive Director of The Mark Twain House & Museum. "It's a recognition not only of Twain as an author of world stature, as our international guests remind us daily, but also of the iconic nature of 'The House that Mark Built' in the history of architecture and design."

The Ten Best of Everything notes "the soaring dramatic grand hall" and "the book-filled library, glass conservatory, and billiard room"; lists the important works by Twain written while the Clemenses lived in the house (The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,  and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, among many others); and describes the "classic Victorian interiors designed by Louis C. Tiffany, Candace Wheeler, Lockwood DeForest and Samuel Coleman." It quotes Twain himself: "It is a

The Book That Named an Era: Mark Twain's and Charles Dudley Warner's The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today is March's Nook Farm Book Club Selection

Drama of Washington Politics and Corruption, with Resonance in Today's World, is Featured in Monthly Book Discussion Highlighting Upcoming Exhibition on 'The Gilded Age of Hartford'
Hartford, Connecticut - The book named an era, and it is often cited for its startling application to our contemporary world: The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, published in 1873, is chillingly relevant.

And the stuff of punditry. Shortly before the 2008 crash of the financial system, economist, New York Times columnist and Nobel winner Paul Krugman pointed out that "income inequality -- which began rising at the same time that modern conservatism began gaining political power -- is now fully back to Gilded Age levels."

The Gilded Age is a tale of Washington lobbying, love and corruption, get-rich-quick schemes, exploitation of recently freed slaves and crooked land deals in the West. It features memorable Twain characters: the eternally speculating, eternally failing Colonel Beriah Sellers, whom Twain later turned into a successful stage act; and the beautiful, brilliant but flawed lobbyist Laura Hawkins.

On Wednesday, March 6, this classic will be the subject of discussion at The Mark Twain House & Museum in a session of the Nook Farm Book Club, the collaboration of The Mark Twain House & Museum and the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center. Since 2010 the book club has introduced books by and about Twain and Stowe; examples of the literature of their time; and modern works exploring the issues that concerned these two opinionated, deeply influential authors.

The Gilded Age is readily available and for sale at The Mark Twain Museum Store (860-280-3136 or http://shop.marktwainhouse.org.) Having read the book is not necessary to enjoyment of the conversation, which is always wide-ranging. The discussion will be led by Steve Courtney, Publicist and Publications Editor at The Mark Twain House & Museum. He is the author of a study of Twain's contemporary and friend, the Rev. Joseph Hopkins Twichell, and his life in Gilded Age Hartford.

The Nook Farm Book Club discussion of The Gilded Age is in conjunction with an important new exhibition at The Mark Twain House & Museum, The Gilded Age of Hartford, opening March 15. The exhibition will explore the major cultural, social and economic trends of the era, and Hartford's pivotal role in those trends. Artwork and artifacts will include  historic paintings of Hartford of that era, examples of the city's industrial strength such as a bicycle built by Hartford's Pope Manufacturing Co., and even a section of trolley car track that ran in front of the Mark Twain House, recently excavated in an MDC project.

The Nook Farm Book Club will meet at The Mark Twain House & Museum, 351 Farmington Ave., Hartford, Conn., on Wednesday, March 6. A 5:00 p.m. reception will be followed by the 5:30 p.m. discussion. The event is free, but registration is encouraged at 860-522-9258, Ext. 317.  

The novel was a collaboration of Twain and his neighbor Warner, the editor of the Hartford Courant, essayist, travel writer and novelist. Twain said the book was written as the result of a fireside challenge from the mens' wives when they denigrated contemporary fiction. It was both authors' first novel. "This provocative tale about Americans' obsession with getting rich -- greed and speculation in the financial markets and the influence of money and lobbyists in Congress-- remains a Tale of Today," says Donald Tiffany Bliss, Author of Mark Twain's Tale of Today, a major recent study of Twain's politics.

The Nook Farm Book Club is a collaboration between The Mark Twain House & Museum and the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, and is supported in part by the Connecticut Humanities Council.

The Gilded Age of Hartford exhibition is sponsored by Tauck, The Edward C. and Ann T. Roberts Foundation and Hartford Steam Boiler. Additional support is provided by the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development, Office of the Arts; and the Greater Hartford Arts Council.

About the Museums
The Mark Twain House & Museum has restored the author's Hartford, Connecticut, home, where the author and his family lived from 1874 to 1891. The museum's mission is to foster appreciation of the legacy of Mark Twain. Programs at The Mark Twain House & Museum are made possible in part by support from the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development and the Greater Hartford Arts Council. For more information, call 860-247-0998 or visit www.marktwainhouse.org.    

The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center preserves and interprets Stowe's Hartford home and the Center's historic collections, promotes vibrant discussion of her life and work, and inspires commitment to social justice and positive change. For more information, call 860-522-9258, Ext. 317, or visit www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org.