Tom Quirk

Thomas Quirk
Professor Emeritus
Education

PhD 1977, University of New Mexico

Research and Teaching

American literature and culture

Tom Quirk is the author of articles on American literature and culture and variety of American authors, including Joyce Carol Oates, Langston Hughes, Willa Cather, Wallace Stevens, Edgar Allan Poe, E.A. Robinson, Ring Lardner, Nathaniel Hawthorne, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and others. He is also the author, editor, or co-editor of several books and monographs, including: Melville's Confidence Man (Missouri, 1982), Romanticism: Critical Essays in American Literature (Garland, 1986), Bergson and American Culture: The Worlds of Willa Cather and Wallace Stevens and Writing the American Classics (both North Carolina, 1990), Coming to Grips with "Huckleberry Finn"(Missouri, 1993), Tales, Speeches, Essays, and Sketches by Mark Twain (Penguin, 1994), American Realism and the Canon: A Collection of Essays (Delaware, 1994), Biographies of Books: The Backgrounds, Genesis, and Composition of Notable American Writings (Missouri, 1996), Mark Twain: A Study of the Short Fiction (Twayne, 1997), The Portable American Realism Reader (Viking/Penguin, 1997), Tales of Soldiers and Civilians and Other Stories by Ambrose Bierce (Penguin, 2000), Nothing Abstract: Investigations in the American Literary Imagination(Missouri, 2001), The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain (Penguin, 2002), and The Portable Mark Twain(Penguin/Putnam 2004). He is the volume editor for Alexander's Bridge in the Willa Cather Scholarly Editions Project (Nebaska, 2007). He is editor of the Dictionary of Literary Biography Documentary Volume: Huckleberry Finn (Bruccoli, Clark, and Layman, 2008), and he is the co-editor of American History through Literature 3 vols. (Scribners, 2006). He recently completed Mark Twain and Human Nature (Missouri, 2007). He is coeditor of A Research Guide to American Literature, 1865-1914 (Facts on File, 2010). In 2009 he received The John S. Tuckey Lifetime Achievement Award for Contributions to Mark Twain Scholarship and to the Elmira College Center for Mark Twain Studies. He is the editor of the Mark Twain and His Circle series of scholarly books published by the University of Missouri Press.

Selected Publications

Tom Quirk. "The Man against the Sky." American History through Literature, 1870-1920, 3 vols Eds. Tom Quirk and Gary Scharnhorst. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2006. II: 662-666

Tom Quirk. "Scientific Materialism." American History through Literature, 1870-1920, 3 vols Eds. Tom Quirk and Gary Scharnhorst. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2006. III: 1018-1023

Tom Quirk. "The Confidence Man: His Masquerade." American History through Literature, 1820-1870 3 vols Eds Robert Sattelmeyer and Janet Gabler-Hover. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2006. I: 272-277

Thomas Quirk and Gary Scharnhorst, eds.. American History Through Literature, 1870-1920 3 vols. (Scribner's, 2005) www.gale.com

Tom Quirk. "Mark Twain and Human Nature." A Companion to Mark Twain Eds. Peter Messent and Louis J. Budd. Oxford, UK: Blackwell's Publishing, 2005. 21-37

Thomas Quirk. The Portable Mark Twain (Penguin Classics, 2004) us.penguingroup.com

Tom Quirk. "Teaching the Isms of the Realist Era." The Mark Twain Annual 2 (2004): 97-106

Tom Quirk. "Mark Twain." Encyclopedia Britannica 16th edition. Chicago, Illinois. XII: 75-77

Thomas Quirk, ed. The Innocents Abroad (Penguin, 2002) us.penguingroup.com

Thomas Quirk. Nothing Abstract: Investigations in the American Literary Imagination (Missouri, 2001)www.umsystem.edu

Thomas Quirk, ed. Tales of Soldiers and Civilians and Other Stories by Ambrose Bierce (Penguin, 2000)us.penguingroup.com