The Best of Times

Abstract Biographers from Albert Bigelow Paine to Ron Powers to Gary Scharnhorst have thoroughly charted the years from 1872 to 1891, during which Sam Clemens’s family grew and thrived. In that period, Twain produced an astonishing literary output, writing works that together changed the face of American literature: The Gilded Age, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Prince and the Pauper, Life on the Mississippi, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Biographers have naturally focused on Twain himself, and Barbara Snedecor’s recent collection of Olivia Clemens’s letters, Gravity (2023), has fleshed out the family’s life from his wife Livy’s perspective. No one has yet to consider these two decades from the point of view of the Clemens daughters, however. How did Susy, Clara, and Jean experience their girlhoods as Mark Twain’s daughters? What were their relationships to their parents and the details of their daily lives, bounded by the expectations placed upon girls of their social class? How did they interact among themselves? This article explores those questions, examining Susy, Clara, and Jean Clemens’s upbringing, schooling, interactions with household members, and developing interests in drama, music, and animal welfare during their childhood years.