Thomas Ruys SmithThomas Ruys Smith is a Lecturer in American Literature and Culture in the School of American Studies at the University of East Anglia, UK. He is the author of Southern Queen: Nw Orleans in the Nineteenth Century (Continuum, 2011), River of Dreams: Imagining the Mississippi Before Mark Twain (Louisiana State University Press, 2007) and the editor of Blacklegs, Card Sharps and Confidence Men: Nineteenth-Century Mississippi River Gambling Stories (Louisiana State University Press, 2010). He is currently at work on an exploration of Mark Twain's relationship with the Mississippi River.
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