Mark Twain’s literature has influenced thousands of people across the United States.

The State of Alabama influenced Twain.

On Wednesday, residents of the Camellia City will have the chance to learn how. Richard Anderson, Professor Emeritus of English at Huntingdon College in Montgomery, will present a lecture entitled “Simon and Pap and Huck and Tom: Alabama Influences on the Fiction of Mark Twain” at the Wendell Mitchell Conference Center on the campus of LBW Community College.

“The program is going to be about the relationship between the characters Jim and Huck in Huckleberry Fin,” said Mollie Smith Waters, an instructor of English, speech and theater at LBW.

Waters said the program should capture the interest of anyone who is a Mark Twain fan, a fan of the work of The Adventures of Huckleberry Fin or has an interest in Alabama history.

The program was made possible by a mini-grant received from the LBWCC Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation, and the cooperation of the Alabama Humanities Foundation Roads Scholar Speakers Bureau.

“The Alabama Humanities Foundation makes available a wide variety of quality humanities programming throughout the state,” according to the program’s website. “From literacy promotion to teacher development to grants, we hope to meet the humanities enrichment needs of every interested citizen in Alabama.”

Waters said it’s a real treat to have such a program in Greenville.

“We don’t often get programs like this in our area,” Waters said. “If you want something scholarly, you have to go out of town to get it. It’s an opportunity for people who live locally to hear someone who has a real knowledge base of this material presented in a professional manner.”
The lecture will be held at 11 a.m. and is open to the public. Admission is free.