The frog that jump-started Samuel Clemens’ career

An inscription in an early edition of “The Celebrated Jumping Frog” book in which the owner wrote a question to the author about John Paul, the pseudonym used by one of Twain’s editors: “Did John Paul discover you or did you know you were a good thing yourself?” Twain wrote his response: “John Paul never discovered anything nor anybody. He was not even a very good liar.” (Signed) SLC (for Samuel Langhorne Clemens / Mark Twain. The book is part of the Mark Twain Project and Papers collection at UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library.   (Randy Lewis / Los Angeles Times)

Jim Fletcher, “official storyteller of Calaveras County,” photographed with a bronze statue of Mark Twain at Camps Restaurant in Angels Camp, Calif., where he gives a weekly presentation on Twain’s “88 Days in the Mother Lode.”   (Randy Lewis / Los Angeles Times)

An iron sculpture along Main Street in Angels Camp, Calif., cast in the form of a gold miner next to a frog being carried in an ore car. A frog also decorates recycling bins in the city. Homages to Mark Twain and his “celebrated jumping frog” story are everywhere in Angels Camp.   (Randy Lewis / Los Angeles Times)

Vintage laundry is strung high above Main Street in downtown Angels Camp, the former mining town that hosts the annual Calaveras County Fair and Jumping Frog Jubilee, which runs May 14-17 this year. The laundry is a vestige of an earlier era when residents would wash their clothes and hang them out to dry ahead of festivals in the region.

A wood cabin on Jackass Hill about 10 miles south of Angels Camp. The cabin was built in 1922 to replace an earlier one that was destroyed. The original was owned by miner and storyteller Jim Gillis, who befriended 29-year-old Samuel Clemens when he came to the area for 88 days that became an important time in the development of his career as a writer and humorist.

One drawer among dozens cataloging about 2,700 of the estimated 50,000 letters Mark Twain wrote during his lifetime. These are housed at UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library for the Mark Twain Project and Papers.

Robert H. Hirst, general editor and official curator at the Mark Twain Project and Papers at UC Berkeley.   (Randy Lewis / Los Angeles Times)