Ohio is not the first state you associate with Mark Twain. It's not the second, third, fourth, or fifth state you associate with him, given the claims made by Missouri, California, Nevada, New York and Connecticut. Still, Ohio does have many intriguing and important Twain connections. He gave lectures or readings from his works in fifteen Ohio cities. He planned on starting his married life in Cleveland, as part owner of a newspaper. And some of his most significant friendships were with Ohioans. They included early literary mentor Mary Mason Fairbanks, fellow writer William Dean Howells and President Ulysses S. Grant. Compiled by veteran Twain enthusiast and performer Mark Dawidziak, Mark Twain in Ohio documents the many times the writer visited the state. Featuring about twenty illustrations, this book includes excerpts from letters Twain wrote while in Ohio and the texts of lectures he delivered there. It's a breezy trip through the state in Mark Twain's company, with stops in Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Akron, Toledo and many other Ohio cities. Along the way, there are passages about Twain's friendships with such other writers as Howells, Artemus Ward (Charles Farrar Browne), Bret Harte, Petroleum V. Nasby (David Ross Locke), Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw) and George Washington Cable. Mark Twain in Ohio also details how Twain launched his epic round-the-world lecture tour in Cleveland in 1895, heroically beginning his successful attempt to literally talk his way out of bankruptcy. Mark Dawidziak's books about Mark Twain include M ark Twain on Writing (1996), The Shape of the River: The Lost Teleplay About Mark Twain (2003) and Mark Twain's Guide to Diet, Exercise, Beauty, Fashion, Investment, Romance, Health and Happiness (2015) . The television critic at Cleveland's Plain Dealer since 1999, he has been portraying Twain on stage for thirty-five years. He and his wife, Sara Showman, are the co-founders of the Largely Literary Theater Company.
About the Author: Mark Dawidziak, an editorial board member at Rod Serling Books, has been the television critic at the Cleveland Plain Dealer since July 1999. During his sixteen years at the Akron Beacon Journal, he held such posts as TV columnist, movie critic and critic-at-large. Also an author and playwright, his many books include the 1994 horror novel Grave Secrets and two histories of landmark TV series: The Columbo Phile: A Casebook (1989) and The Night Stalker Companion (1997). A recognized Mark Twain scholar, his books on the author include Mark My Words: Mark Twain on Writing (1996), Horton Foote's The Shape of the River: The Lost Teleplay About Mark Twain (2003) and Mark Twain's Guide to Diet, Exercise, Fashion, Investment, Romance, Health and Happiness (which will be published in June). He also has been portraying Twain on stage for more than thirty-five years. He is the co-author (with Paul J. Bauer) of Jim Tully: American Writer, Irish Rover, Hollywood Brawler, which was published in 2011 with a foreword by Ken Burns. It's the first full-length biography of "hobo writer" Jim Tully, a forgotten author hailed as "America's Gorky" and as a literary superstar in the 1920s and '30s. He and Bauer have edited and written introductions for four Kent State University Press reprints of books by Tully: Beggars of Life, Circus Parade, Shanty Irish and The Bruiser. His work on the horror side of the street also includes the 2008 non-fiction study The Bedside, Bathtub, & Armchair Companion to Dracula, a play (The Tell-Tale Play), short stories and comic books scripts. Several of his essays and introductions appear in Richard Matheson's Kolchak Scripts (2003) and Bloodlines: Richard Matheson's Dracula, I Am Legend, and Other Vampire Stories (2006), two books he edited for Gauntlet Press. He contributed the career appreciation and overview to Produced and Directed by Dan Curtis (2004) and he is the creative consultant to Moonstone's comic book series Kolchak: The Night Stalker. Dawidziak and his wife, actress Sara Showman, founded the Largely Literary Theater Company in 2002. Dedicated to promoting literacy and literature, the company has staged his three-person version of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, as well as plays based on the works of Twain and Edgar Allan Poe. A journalism graduate of George Washington University, he was born in Huntington, New York. He lives in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, with his wife and their daughter, Rebecca "Becky" Claire.