About This Stamp
As part of its Literary Arts series, the US Postal Service recognizes America’s greatest humorist with this stamp honoring Mark Twain (1835-1910). Twain is the author of beloved works such as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. His Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is widely considered one of the greatest novels in American literature. The stamp portrait shows Twain as an older man; the steamboat in the background evokes a way of life along the Mississippi River that played a huge role in many of Twain’s works, as well as in his own life.
Born Samuel Clemens, Mark Twain took his name from his time working as a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi. Big steamboats needed about 12 feet of water—two fathoms, or “mark twain” in the cry of the leadsman who measured the river’s depth—to float safely. In 1863, Clemens used the byline “Mark Twain” for the first time, signing it to a newspaper article; two years later, he shot to national fame with a widely reprinted comic tale—known today as “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”—about a man who cleverly rigs a contest between two frogs.
Throughout his life, Mark Twain demonstrated his ability to learn, change, and recognize the limitations of views he had previously embraced. A child of slaveholders who became a profound critic of racism, and an early supporter of American expansionism who became a leader of the Anti-Imperialist League, he was not afraid to admit that he had been wrong or to reject values he had once accepted. Twain thought seriously about how these transformations happened—or failed to happen—and shared his insights in a rich body of work that is as thought-provoking today as when he wrote it.
The first stamp in the Literary Arts series, issued in 1979, honored John Steinbeck; many other deserving literary stars have been recognized since then. The tradition continues in 2011 with the Mark Twain stamp, 27th in the series. Art director and stamp designer Phil Jordan worked with artist Gregory Manchess to create the stamp honoring Twain. It is being issued in panes of 20 self-adhesive Forever® stamps. Forever stamps are always equal in value to the current First-Class Mail one-ounce rate.
Stamp Art Director, Stamp Designer
Phil Jordan
Phil Jordan grew up in New Bern, North Carolina, and attended East Carolina University. After Army service in Alaska, he graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a degree in visual communications. He worked in advertising and in design at a trade association before joining Beveridge and Associates, Inc., where he provided art direction for corporate, institutional, and government design projects. A partner in the firm, he left after 18 years to establish his own design firm where he managed projects for USAir, NASA, McGraw-Hill, IBM, and Smithsonian Books, among others. He was Design Director of Air & Space/Smithsonian magazine for 15 years. His work appeared in numerous exhibitions and publications such as Graphis and Communications Arts. A past president of the Art Directors Club of Metropolitan Washington, he was an art director for the U.S. Postal Service from 1991 to 2014. A resident of Falls Church, Virginia, he is a retired glider pilot and a member of the Skyline Soaring Club.
Stamp Artist
Gregory Manchess
Painter Gregory Manchess has worked as a freelance illustrator for nearly forty years on advertising campaigns, magazines, and book covers. His work has appeared on covers and in feature stories for National Geographic magazine, TIME, The Atlantic Monthly, and Smithsonian Magazine.
Noting his passion for history, the National Geographic Society sent Manchess on an expedition to record the exploits of explorer, David Thomson. The Society also chose his work to illustrate the traveling exhibition, Real Pirates: The Untold Story of The Whydah, from Slave Ship to Pirate Ship. His large portrait of Abraham Lincoln and seven other paintings of moments from Lincoln’s life are exhibited at the Abraham Lincoln Memorial Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois.
The artist has illustrated children’s books, including Nanuk: Lord of the Ice and Cheyenne Medicine Hat, written by Brian Heinz, and To Capture the Wind by author Sheila MacGill-Callahan.
Manchess is included in Walt Reed’s edition of The Illustrator in America, 1860-2000. Widely awarded within the industry, he exhibits frequently at the Society of Illustrators in New York. The Society presented him with its highest honor, the coveted Hamilton King Award.
Today, Manchess divides his time between New York and Kentucky, his native state. He lectures frequently at universities and colleges nationwide, gives painting workshops at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, MA, and teaches at the Illustration Master Class in Amherst, MA.
His figure and portrait work has led to numerous commissions for stamps by the U.S. Postal Service, including Oregon Statehood (2009), Mark Twain (2011), The 1963 March On Washington (2013), five paintings for Enjoy the Great Outdoors (2020), and ten for Snowy Beauty (2022).