 | Life and Sayings of Mrs. Partington and others of the family |  |
SHILLABER'S IKE
Like MT, Benjamin Penhallow Shillaber began his career as a newspaper compositor. In 1847, a squib he set into the Boston Post about a scatter-brained woman named Mrs. Partington instantly caught the public's fancy. In the early 1850s he edited the humor magazine The Carpet-Bag , the first national periodical to which Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain not having been born yet) sent a contribution. The two sketches below, featuring Mrs. Partington's nephew Isaac, or Ike, were among the pieces Shillaber collected for The Life and Sayings of Mrs. Partington and Others of the Family (New York: J.C. Derby, 1854). The book sold thousands of copies, and was a favorite of MT's. He probably intended the picture of Mrs. P on the last page of Tom Sawyer as both a tribute to Shillaber and an acknowledgment of the kinship between the two aunts and their mischevious nephews.
Ruth Partington
[Description: Mrs.
Partington seated at a table, mending]
| Life and Sayings of Mrs. Partington and others of the family | |