Ruth Franklin

Ruth Franklin is a literary critic and biographer whose work appears in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Harper’s, and elsewhere. Her latest book is The Many Lives of Anne Frank, which explores the life, afterlife, and cultural history of Anne Frank and her diary. She is at work on a project about Mark Twain’s legacy in today’s America.

Twain Town, U.S.A.

Samuel Clemens is everywhere in Hannibal, Missouri, but is the story the town tells about its favorite son grounded in reality or myth?

By Ruth Franklin | Monday June 1, 2026

Twain Town, U.S.A.

By Ruth Franklin | Monday June 1, 2026

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