Some Thoughts on the Science of Onanism
"Some Thoughts on the Science of Onanism" is a speech delivered by Mark Twain in Paris at the Stomach Club in spring, 1879. The Stomach Club was a collection of U.S. expatriate writers and artists, such as Edwin Austin Abbey. The speech satirically dealt with masturbation ("onanism") and the perceived bane it is on society. Long suppressed, it was "first circulated by the Twain specialist, Franklin J. Meine, in typewritten copies during the 1940s, and by Chicago advertising man, George Brownell, in twenty-five mimeographed copies circulated among members of the Mark Twain Society of Chicago in 1952. It was first actually printed in Ralph Ginzburg's Fact magazine[1][2] The first printed copies appeared in 1952 as an accordion-folded version limited to 100 copies.[3][4][5]
In 1976, the speech was published as "Some Remarks on the Science of Onanism" in The Mammoth Cod and Address to the Stomach Club.[6]
References
- ^ Facts, (New York, March 1964) Vol. 1, No. 2: pages 18-21
- ^ Twain, Mark, The Mammoth Cod and Address to the Stomach Club with an introduction by G. Legman, Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Maledicta, Inc., 1976, p. 1 of Legman's introduction.
- ^ Twain, Mark. Some Thoughts on the Science of Onanism [1]
- ^ 1952 edition at Yale University Library collections
- ^ Atlantic Monthly
- ^ Twain, Mark, The Mammoth Cod and Address to the Stomach Club with an introduction by G. Legman, Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Maledicta, Inc., 1976.
- v
- t
- e
- The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
- The Prince and the Pauper
- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
- The American Claimant
- Tom Sawyer Abroad
- Pudd'nhead Wilson
- Tom Sawyer, Detective
- Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc
- A Double Barrelled Detective Story
- A Horse's Tale
- The Mysterious Stranger
- Hellfire Hotchkiss
- "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County"
- "Cannibalism in the Cars"
- "A Literary Nightmare"
- "A Murder, a Mystery, and a Marriage"
- "The Great Revolution in Pitcairn"
- "1601"
- "The Stolen White Elephant"
- "Luck"
- "The Million Pound Bank Note"
- "A Double Barrelled Detective Story"
- "Those Extraordinary Twins"
- "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg"
- "A Dog's Tale"
- "Extracts from Adam's Diary"
- "The War Prayer"
- "Eve's Diary"
- "Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven"
- "My Platonic Sweetheart"
- "Advice for Good Little Girls"
- Mark Twain's (Burlesque) Autobiography and First Romance
- Sketches New and Old
- Mark Twain's Library of Humor
- Merry Tales
- The £1,000,000 Bank Note and Other New Stories
- The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories
- "The Awful German Language"
- "On the Decay of the Art of Lying"
- "Advice to Youth"
- How to Tell a Story and Other Essays
- "Concerning the Jews"
- "To the Person Sitting in Darkness"
- "Edmund Burke on Croker and Tammany"
- "What Is Man?"
- "The United States of Lyncherdom"
- "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses"
- Letters from the Earth
- Territorial Enterprise letters
- Letters from Hawaii
- The Innocents Abroad
- Roughing It
- Old Times on the Mississippi
- A Tramp Abroad
- Life on the Mississippi
- Following the Equator
- Is Shakespeare Dead?
- Autobiography of Mark Twain (Chapters from My Autobiography)
- King Leopold's Soliloquy
- The Private History of a Campaign That Failed
- Christian Science
- "Some Thoughts on the Science of Onanism"
- "Votes for Women"
and events
- Mark Twain Prize for American Humor
- Mark Twain Tonight!
- The Adventures of Mark Twain (1944)
- The Adventures of Mark Twain (1985)
- Mark Twain (2001 documentary)
- Twain and Shaw Do Lunch (2011 play)
- Mark Twain: The Musical
- Olivia Langdon Clemens (wife)
- Susy Clemens (daughter)
- Clara Clemens (daughter)
- Jean Clemens (daughter)
- John M. Clemens (father)
- Jane Lampton Clemens (mother)
- Orion Clemens (brother)