Stamp Release: Mark Twain

For release tomorrow, this 27th stamp in the "Literary Arts" series honors Mark Twain, the author of many beloved works including Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, widely considered one of the greatest novels in American literature. Art director and designer Phil Jordan used work by stamp artist Gregory Manchess, who based his portrait of Twain, in oil paints on a board, on a photograph taken around 1907 by Underwood & Underwood of New York, now in the collection of the Library of Congress. The stamp background evokes several of Twain’s works set along the Mississippi River of his youth. {Info from Beyond the Perf}

Twain was first commemorated on a U.S. stamp in 1940 and there have also been stamps issued for Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Mark Twain forever,