According to William Faulkner, Mark Twain was 'the first truly American writer ['] the father of American literature.' This module will test such paternity claims and examine their wider ramifications. We will explore Twain's writing, his relationship to the Gilded Age, his contemporaries, and his influence on later American writers. As both author and man, Twain contained multitudes. Few writers have straddled so many genres and styles, and few Americans have embodied so many of the nation's animating forces and tensions. He was, as his friend William Dean Howells felt, 'incomparable', and this module is an opportunity for significant reading and research into his life, work and beyond.