Paul Fatout was a professor of English at Purdue University. Among his many works are Mark Twain Speaks for Himself, Indiana Canals, Letters of a Civil War Surgeon, Mark Twain in Virginia City, Mark Twain on the Lecture Circuit, Meadow Lake: Gold Town, Ambrose Bierce: The Devil's Lexicographer, Canal's Heyday (Tippecanoe Tales), Artemus Ward among the Mormons, The Twain-Cable Readings in Indiana, Mark Twain's First Lecture: A Parallel (His Miscellanea), and Mr. Lincoln Goes to Washington. He died in 1982.