John Bird, a founding editor of The Mark Twain Annual and current author of the yearly Mark Twain chapter in American Literary Scholarship, here assembled thirty-four Twain scholars qualified to comment on five aspects of his complex carer: biography, literary contexts within which he wrote, historical and cultural contexts of his time, reception and criticism he and his works encountered, and the extent of his various legacies.  Alan Gribben contributed  “Reading”  in  Part  I:  Life.