Rare Stormfield Photos Released

This summer's Mark Twain Journal is now available and it showcases Stormfield! Kevin MacDonnell's amazing collection of Stormfield photos are the highlight of the journal, it also contains a great deal of information on the house and house events. Kevin explained in a recent Mark Twain Forum post:

"You will indeed get a good sense of the interior, and I describe the concert as well. There were 525 people there, but only 160 got inside the house. Ticket prices varied according to the room, from $1.50 down to 50 cents. I list about 40 sources on Stormfield (book, newspaper and magazine articles) including Bispham's 1920 memoir."

"I hope my article makes for fun and informative reading for thoseexcited by the 100th anniversay of Stormfield. It's a "virtual tour" created by using forty-one photos from my own archives (most of them previously unpublished), as well as the original floorplans and plate map of the house and grounds. I also include a guessing game at the end using twelve more photos (some previosuly unpublished) from the Mark Twain Papers at Berkeley.

I plotted the location and field of vision for each photo on the original architect's floorplans and plat maps so that the reader can trace them in sequence and gain a sense of the physical feel of Stormfield. I also describe the physical structure and construction of Stormfield in more detail than ever before, as part of my effort to create the physical presence of the place. My goal was not to retell the story of events that took place at Stormfield but instead to present the physical presence of this home now long lost, so that readers of Ham Hill and Karen Lystra can now visualize where all of those events at the end of Twain's life actually took place. I am extremely grateful to the ever-helpful folks at the Mark
Twain Papers, Hartford, Hannibal, and elsewhere who assisted me in my research, and special thanks to Tom Tenney who will happily sell anyone a copy of the MTJ to anyone who contacts him."

The journal is available by subscription. http://www.marktwainjournal.com/mtj_personal_order_form.html