Synopses & Reviews
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut
The Stolen White Elephant
Luck
The £1,000,000 Bank-Note
The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg
The Five Boons of Life
Was It Heaven? Or Hell?
The Mysterious Stranger
The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories unites nine of master American humorist Mark Twain’s most accomplished works. From tall tales of con men’s tricks, such as the classic that brought him instant fame, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” to a man with no money (other than a £1,000,000 banknote that no one can cash), to an exposé of greed and hypocrisy in perhaps his greatest short story, “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg,” Twain showcases his notorious humor—skewering policemen, clergymen, politicians, bankers, and others—and displays his changing attitude toward human nature. The finale is the novella The Mysterious Stranger, a rarity for Mark Twain in which he turns his sardonic, freewheeling wit on eternal evil in a distant time and place—and conjures a memorable, tormenting conclusion.
Synopsis
Featuring the brilliantly drawn Roxanna, a mulatto slave who suffers dire consequences after switching her infant son with her master's baby, and the clever Pudd'nhead Wilson, an ostracized small-town lawyer, Twain's darkly comic masterpiece is a provocative exploration of slavery and miscegenation. Leslie A. Fiedler described the novel as "half melodramatic detective story, half bleak tragedy," noting that "morally, it is one of the most honest books in our literature." "Those Extraordinary Twins, the slapstick story that evolved into Pudd'nhead Wilson, provides a fascinating view of the author's process.
The text for this Modern Library Paperback Classic was set from the 1894 first American edition.
Synopsis
This intriguing work tackles the seminal American issue of slavery in an antebellum tragicomedy of switched identities, as a freeborn child and a slave child change places. The result is a biting social commentary-plus a good old-fashioned murder mystery...
Synopsis
THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER
Take a lighthearted, nostalgic trip to a simpler time, seen through the eyes of a very special boy named Tom Sawyer. It is a dreamlike summertime world of hooky and adventure, pranks and punishment, villains and first love, filled with memorable characters. Adults and young readers alike continue to enjoy this delightful classic of the promise and dreams of youth from one of Americas most beloved authors.
ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN
He has no mother, his father is a brutal drunkard, and he sleeps in a barrel. Hes Huck Finnliar, sometime thief, and rebel against respectability. But when Huck meets a runaway slave named Jim, his life changes forever. On their exciting flight down the Mississippi aboard a raft, the boy nobody wanted matures into a young man of courage and conviction. As Ernest Hemingway said of this glorious novel, All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.”
With an Introduction by Shelley Fisher Fishkin
and a New Afterword
About the Author
Mark Twain was born Samuel Clemens in Florida, Missouri, in 1835, and died at Redding, Connecticut in 1910. In his person and in his pursuits, he was a man of extraordinary contrasts. Although he left school at twelve when his father died, he was eventually awarded honorary degrees from Yale University, the University of Missouri, and Oxford University. His career encompassed such varied occupations as printer, Mississippi riverboat pilot, journalist, travel writer, and publisher. He made fortunes from his writing, but toward the end of his life, he had to resort to lecture tours to pay his debts. He was hot-tempered, profane, and sentimentaland also pessimistic, cynical, and tortured by self-doubt. He lives in American letters as a great artist, the writer whom William Dean Howells called the Lincoln of our literature.”
Shelley Fisher Fishkin, who holds a PhD in American Studies from Yale University, is the Joseph S. Atha Professor of Humanities, Professor of English, and Director of American Studies at Stanford University. Among her acclaimed and award-winning books are Lighting Out for the Territory: Reflections on Mark Twain and American Culture, Was Huck Black? Mark Twain and African American Voices, and From Fact to Fiction: Journalism and Imaginative Writing in America. She edited the twenty-nine volume Oxford Mark Twain and has served as President of the Mark Twain Circle of America.