Riverboat pilot, Western correspondent, silver prospector, and world traveler, Samuel Clemens has long seemed the quintessential man's man. To Laura Skandera-Trombley, however, he is a writer who intentionally surrounded himself with women, one whose capacity to produce fiction had almost as much to do with the environment shaped by his female family and associates as with his own talent and genius.

In Mark Twain in the Company of Women, Skandera-Trombley resettles Clemens in the company of the women authors with whom he corresponded; his daughters Susy, Clara, and Jean; the inhabitants of the progressive community of Elmira, New York; and, perhaps most important, his beloved wife, Livy, who emerges here as a figure of strength, intelligence, and influence.