LAMAMIMET

Alan Gribben was born on November 21, 1941, in Parsons, Kansas, and built a career as a professor of English at Auburn University at Montgomery in Alabama, eventually becoming department head and retiring as professor emeritus. He served as distinguished research professor from 1998 to 2001 and held the Dr. Guinevera A. Nance Alumni Professorship from 2006 to 2009, and he edited the *Mark Twain Journal*.

Gribben specialized in the works of Mark Twain, publishing the three‑volume *Mark Twain’s Literary Resources* in 2019, a comprehensive collection of Twain’s readings and references. He was a frequent speaker at classes, bookstores, and reading groups across the United States, discussing Twain’s novels in depth.

In 2011, Gribben released a combined edition of *The Adventures of Tom Sawyer* and *Adventures of Huckleberry Finn* that replaced the word “nigger” with “slave” and altered other offensive terms, aiming to provide a version suitable for modern classrooms. The edition sparked widespread debate, with critics arguing that the changes diluted the historical impact of Twain’s language, while supporters praised the effort to make the text more accessible.

Alan Gribben died of pancreatic cancer on May 9, 2026, at the age of 84.