Published in 1910, this book is a testament to the long friendship between Howells and Twain. "Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes—I knew them all and all the rest of our sages, poets, seers, critics, humorists," Howells writes; "they were like one another and like other literary men; but Clemens [Twain] was sole, incomparable, the Lincoln of our literature." The second half of the book collects Howells's perceptive reviews of Twain's works.