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''Twain’s Geography,'' created by Scott Holmes, maps the life and travels of Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain) to the places he lived in, passed through, and wrote about.  Holmes' work shows the amazing promise and possibilities of moving from a print format to a digital format.  Its organizing idea is geographic: it takes the chronology of Twain’s life and grounds it in the places where events occurred, linking biography to place with a rich digital interface created in Drupal.

== The parts ==

# '''The biographical timeline and narrative overview''' appear on the home page. This section walks through Twain’s life in 18 place-anchored periods. These include his birth and boyhood in Missouri, leaving home as a typesetter, learning to pilot on the Mississippi, his years out West, the ''Quaker City'' voyage, marriage and the Hartford years, time in Europe, the global lecture tour, and his final years. Each period summarizes both events and locations (https://twainsgeography.com/).
# '''The location gazetteer''' (https://twainsgeography.com/gazetteer). Each page covers a specific place tied to Twain — town, city, address, hotel, theater, river, or landmark — creating a comprehensive list (~2,190 entries in <code>places.csv</code>). This is the site’s geographic heart.
# '''The ''Day By Day'' volumes''' (https://twainsgeography.com/page/day-day-volume-i) are hosted on Holmes’s site. The site features all four volumes of David H. Fears’s ''Mark Twain Day by Day: An Annotated Chronology'', including front matter, Fears’s dating conventions (University of California Press style, with day-of-week added), the works-cited apparatus, and the dated entries. Entries are integrated with geographic data so the chronology connects to mapped locations.

In short: the site, digitally and expertly, connects three layers — a life-timeline, a place gazetteer, and Fears’s day-by-day chronology — through geography. This integration of Fears and place data forms a useful resource for the current 'Digital Mark Twain Day by Day', which will then be adding network visualizations, search, and a new interface.

'''Sources:''' [https://twainsgeography.com/ Twain’s Geography — home], [https://twainsgeography.com/page/day-day-volume-i Day By Day: Volume I].

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== Sections of Twain’s life (Twain’s Geography epochs) ==

In addition to using the information collected for gazetteer [https://twainsgeography.com/gazetteer]. Holmes use of the stages of Twain's life can be a helpful way to organize the daily entries (beyond simply colume and decade used by Fears).

# [https://twainsgeography.com/epoch/hannibal-years The Hannibal Years] — beginning Nov 30, 1835
# [https://twainsgeography.com/epoch/restless-type-setter The Restless Typesetter] — beginning May 25, 1853
# [https://twainsgeography.com/epoch/sam-clemens-mississippi Sam Clemens on the Mississippi] — beginning Feb 16, 1857
# [https://twainsgeography.com/epoch/sam-clemens-goes-west Sam Clemens Goes West] — beginning Jul 18, 1861
# [https://twainsgeography.com/epoch/mark-twain-reporter Mark Twain, Reporter] — beginning Sep 16, 1862
# [https://twainsgeography.com/epoch/sandwich-islands-tours The Sandwich Islands and Lecture Tours] — beginning Aug 13, 1866
# [https://twainsgeography.com/epoch/innocents-abroad The Innocents Abroad] — beginning May 16, 1867
# [https://twainsgeography.com/epoch/pilgrims-vandals-and-looking-respectability Pilgrims, Vandals, and Looking for Respectability] — beginning Nov 19, 1867
# [https://twainsgeography.com/epoch/life-buffalo Life in Buffalo] — beginning Aug 04, 1869
# [https://twainsgeography.com/epoch/elmira-hartford-and-england Elmira, Hartford, and England] — beginning Mar 18, 1871
# [https://twainsgeography.com/epoch/hartford-house The Hartford House] — beginning Sep 19, 1874
# [https://twainsgeography.com/epoch/tramp-abroad A Tramp Abroad] — beginning Apr 11, 1878
# [https://twainsgeography.com/epoch/home-hartford Home in Hartford] — beginning Sep 02, 1879
# [https://twainsgeography.com/epoch/clemens-family-relocates-europe The Clemens Family Relocates to Europe] — beginning Jun 05, 1891
# [https://twainsgeography.com/epoch/world-tour The World Tour] — beginning May 18, 1895
# [https://twainsgeography.com/epoch/life-exile Life in Exile] — beginning Aug 14, 1896
# [https://twainsgeography.com/epoch/person-sitting-darkness To the Person Sitting in Darkness] — beginning Oct 15, 1900
# [https://twainsgeography.com/epoch/man-white-suit The Man in the White Suit] — beginning Jul 14, 1904

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