Emily Grant Hutchings

Emily Grant Hutchings was an American writer associated with St. Louis and with the spiritualist movement of the early 1900s. She is chiefly known for Jap Herron, a 1917 book she said was dictated to her by the spirit of Mark Twain.

The book caused a sensation because Twain had died in 1910, and Hutchings presented the work as a posthumous communication rather than an ordinary collaboration or imitation. The claim led to public debate and legal trouble involving Twain’s estate, which challenged the publication.

Today, she is remembered less as a conventional novelist than as a curious literary-historical figure whose name remains tied to questions about authorship, belief, and the era’s fascination with séances and spirit writing.