Books by Mark Twain

Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings (Perennial Classics)

by Mark Twain

“The most impressive contribution to books by Mark Twain since The Mysterious Stranger of 1916...The attitude is that of Swift, the intellectual contempt is that of Voltaire, and the imagination is that of one of the great masters of American writing.”—New York Times Book Review
Virtually none of the material in Letters from the Earth was published in Twain’s lifetime and the manuscript was only approved by his executors in 1962. This is vintage Twain—sharp, witty, imaginative, wildly funny. His voice is as vigorous and blistering as ever, capable of surprising truth and provoking laughter in the most unlikely places.
In this collection, he presents himself as the Father of History, reviewing and interpreting events from the garden of Eden through the Fall and the Flood, translating the papers of Adam and his descendants down through the generations. There are comments on James Fenimore Cooper, English architecture, and the civilization of the French, as well as proposals for a simplified alphabet and a parody of books on etiquette. Letters from the Earth an exuberantly eclectic collection.

The War Prayer

by Mark Twain

Written by Mark Twain during the Philippine-American War in the first decade of the twentieth century, The War Prayer tells of a patriotic church service held to send the town's young men off to war. During the service, a stranger enters and addresses the gathering. He tells the patriotic crowd that their prayers for victory are double-edged-by praying for victory they are also praying for the destruction of the enemy... for the destruction of human life.
Originally rejected for publication in 1905 as "not quite suited to a woman's magazine," this antiwar parable remained unpublished until 1923, when Twain's literary executor collected it in the volume Europe and Elsewhere. Handsomely illustrated by the artist and war correspondent Philip Groth, The War Prayer remains a relevant classic by an American icon.

The Autobiography of Mark Twain (Perennial Classics)

by Mark Twain

“A book filled with richnesses of humor and tragedy of disappointment and triumph, of sweetness and bitterness, and all in that unsurpassed American prose.”
—New York Herald Tribune Book Review
Mark Twain was a figure larger than life: massive in talent, eruptive in temperament, unpredictable in his actions. He crafted stories of heroism, adventure, tragedy, and comedy that reflected the changing America of the time, and he tells his own story—which includes sixteen pages of photos—with the same flair he brought to his fiction. Writing this autobiography on his deathbed, Twain vowed to be “free and frank and unembarrassed” in the recounting of his life and his experiences.
Twain was more than a match for the expanding America of riverboats, gold rushes, and the vast westward movement, which provided the material for his novels and which served to inspire this beloved and uniquely American autobiography.

The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn (11 New York Post Family Classics Library, 1)

by Mark Twain

The Thomas Crown Affair meets National Treasure in this page-turning debut thriller.
In Paris, a priest is murdered, his mutilated body dumped into the Seine. He has taken a secret with him to his death -- a secret that is revealed during the autopsy, reawakening memories of Depression-era politics and a seventy-year-old heist.
Jennifer Browne, an ambitious FBI agent, is assigned to the case. For her, this is a final opportunity to kick-start a career that stalled three years ago, after a fatal error in judgment. She is determined that this time there will be no mistakes.
Her investigation soon comes across a daring robbery at Fort Knox. The immediate suspect is Tom Kirk, a brilliant young art thief and a man whose very existence threatens to bring down the newly elected president.
Caught between his desire to get out of the game and his partner's insistence that he complete one last job for the criminal mastermind Cassius, Tom faces a race against time to clear his name -- a race that takes him from London to Paris, and Amsterdam to Istanbul, in a search for the real thieves and the legendary Double Eagle.

Who Is Mark Twain?

by Mark Twain

“More than 100 years after [Twain] wrote these stories, they remain not only remarkably funny but remarkably modern. . . . Ninety-nine years after his death, Twain still manages to get the last laugh.” — Vanity Fair
Who Is Mark Twain? is a collection of twenty six wickedly funny, thought-provoking essays by Samuel Langhorne Clemens—aka Mark Twain—none of which have ever been published before.
"You had better shove this in the stove," Mark Twain said at the top of an 1865 letter to his brother, "for I don't want any absurd ‘literary remains' and ‘unpublished letters of Mark Twain' published after I am planted." He was joking, of course. But when Mark Twain died in 1910, he left behind the largest collection of personal papers created by any nineteenth-century American author. Who Is Mark Twain? presents twenty-six wickedly funny, disarmingly relevant pieces by the American master—a man who was well ahead of his time.

Who Is Mark Twain?

by Mark Twain

“[Twain] was, in the phrase of his friend William Dean Howells, ‘the Lincoln of our literature’... At the heart of his work lies that greatest of all American qualities: irreverence.”
— Washington Post
“More than 100 years after [Twain] wrote these stories, they remain not only remarkably funny but remarkably modern.... Ninety-nine years after his death, Twain still manages to get the last laugh.”
— Vanity Fair
Who Is Mark Twain? is a collection of twenty six wickedly funny, thought-provoking essays by Samuel Langhorne Clemens—aka Mark Twain—none of which have ever been published before, and all of which are completely contemporary, amazingly relevant, and gut-bustingly hilarious.

Adventures of Tom Sawyer Promo (Puffin Classics)

by Mark Twain

The adventures of a mischievous young boy and his friends growing up in a Mississippi River town in the nineteenth century.

The Innocents Abroad (Penguin Classics)

by Mark Twain

Based on a series of letters Mark Twain wrote from Europe to newspapers in San Francisco and New York as a roving correspondent, The Innocents Abroad (1869) is a burlesque of the sentimental travel books popular in the mid-nineteenth century. Twain's fresh and humorous perspective on hallowed European landmarks lacked reverence for the past-the ancient statues of saints on the Cathedral of Notre Dame are "battered and broken-nosed old fellows" and tour guides "interrupt every dream, every pleasant train of thought, with their tiresome cackling." Equally irreverent about American manners (including his own) as he is about European attitudes, Twain ultimately concludes that, for better or worse, "human nature is very much the same all over the world."

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The Puffin Adventure Gift Set: The Call of the Wild / Treasure Island / King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table / the Adventures of Tom Sawyer

by Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jack London, Thomas, Sir Malory

From Jack London's The Call of the Wild and Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer to Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson and King Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory, four best-selling Puffin Classic adventures are packaged together in an attractive gift set.

Adventures of Tom Sawyer

by Mark Twain

While accompanying his grandmother and her new husband to Alaska, former Seattle homicide detective J. P. Beaumont finds himself investigating the murder of middle-aged divorcTe Margaret Featherman aboard a cruise ship, a crime in which the only witness is a hapless Alzheimer's patient. Reprint.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Dover Thrift Editions: Classic Novels)

by Mark Twain

Referring to Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, H. L. Mencken noted that his discovery of this classic American novel was "the most stupendous event of my whole life"; Ernest Hemingway declared that "all modern American literature stems from this one book," while T. S. Eliot called Huck "one of the permanent symbolic figures of fiction, not unworthy to take a place with Ulysses, Faust, Don Quixote, Don Juan, Hamlet."
The novel's preeminence derives from its wonderfully imaginative re-creation of boyhood adventures along the Mississippi River, its inspired characterization, the author's remarkable ear for dialogue, and the book's understated development of serious underlying themes: "natural" man versus "civilized" society, the evils of slavery, the innate value and dignity of human beings, and other topics. Most of all, Huckleberry Finn is a wonderful story, filled with high adventure and unforgettable characters.

Roughing It (Signet Classics)

by Mark Twain

Describes the author's experiences during the six years he spent in California, Nevada, and Hawaii

The Prince and the Pauper

by Mark Twain

A peasant changes places with a prince and both youths learn something about "pleasures and palaces".

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Dover Thrift Editions: Classic Novels)

by Mark Twain

Whether forming a pirate gang to search for buried treasure or spending a quiet time at home, sharing his medicine with Aunt Polly's cat, the irrepressible Tom Sawyer evokes the world of boyhood in nineteenth century rural America. In this classic story, Mark Twain re-created a long-ago world of freshly whitewashed fences and Sunday school picnics into which sordid characters and violent incidents sometimes intruded. The tale powerfully appeals to both adult and young imaginations. Readers explore this memorable setting with a slyly humorous born storyteller as their guide.
Tom and Huck Finn conceal themselves in the town cemetery, where they witness a grave robbery and a murder. Later, the boys, feeling unappreciated, hide out on a forested island while the townspeople conduct a frantic search and finally mourn them as dead. The friends triumphantly return to town to attend their own funeral, in time for a dramatic trial for the graveyard murder. A three-day ordeal ensues when Tom and his sweetheart, Becky Thatcher, lose their way in the very cave that conceals the murderer.
With its hilarious accounts of boyish pranks and its shrewd assessments of human nature, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer has captivated generations of readers of all ages. This inexpensive edition of the classic novel offers a not-to-be-missed opportunity to savor a witty and action-packed account of small-town boyhood in a bygone era.

The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain: A Book of Quotations (Dover Thrift Editions: Speeches/Quotes)

by Mark Twain

Renowned as a novelist, journalist, and humorist, Mark Twain is not only one of the most widely read and admired American writers, he is also among the most quoted. Wit and repartee permeate his work — from the short, light pieces to his great novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and even later, in dark meditations on the human condition where his humor takes on a cynical, satirical twist.
This remarkably inexpensive volume gathers together hundreds of Twain's most memorable quips and comments on life, love, history, culture, travel, and a diversity of other topics that occupied his thoughts over 50 years of writing and lecturing.
An invaluable, ready reference for writers, speakers, and others in search of amusing and insightful quotes, this entertaining and thought-provoking compilation is also an ideal introduction to Twain's inimitable style and thought.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer: Revised Edition (Signet Classic Series)

by Mark Twain

Featuring a new introduction, the classic novel of boyhood in the summer fields of Missouri follows the adventures of Tom Sawyer, his friends Huck and Becky, and his Aunt Polly. Reissue.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Revised Edition

by Mark Twain

The greatest of American classics, featuring a new introduction, follows the waif Huck down the Mississippi with a runaway slave named Jim as he discovers the meaning of friendship and finds his own morality. Reissue.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Signet Classics)

by Mark Twain

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 young 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 America’s most beloved authors.
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

He has no mother, his father is a brutal drunkard, and he sleeps in a barrel. He’s Huck Finn—liar, 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 a New Introduction

@declineofwesternsiv Seems like soon as a fella comes into a bit o’ money, everyone comes out of the woodworks after’n it.

These ladies wants to sivilize me? More like reverse gold-dig my fame and fortune. @FencinTom: Get me outta here!

From Twitterature: The World's Greatest Books in Twenty Tweets or Less

Life on the Mississippi (Dover Thrift Editions: Biography/Autobiography)

by Mark Twain

He was Sam Clemens, steamboat pilot, before he was Mark Twain, famous author. His better-known name originated with the lingo of navigation, and much of his writing was informed by his shipboard adventures on one of the world's great rivers. In this classic of American literature, Twain offers lively recollections ranging from his salad days as a novice pilot to views from the passenger deck in the twilight of the river culture’s heyday.
Under the tutelage of the most celebrated pilot on the Mississippi, young Twain acquires the skills to navigate a constantly changing riverscape, avoiding potential collisions with other boats and traversing winding channels in the dead of night. The vivid and ever-engaging narrative encompasses tales of riverside town feuds, the professional vicissitudes of a riverboat gambler, dramatic accounts of life in Vicksburg as the city lay under siege during the Civil War, and many other scenes from a now-vanished way of life. These antebellum visions take on a bittersweet cast with the author's postwar return to the region, when railroad competition has largely doomed the commercial steamboat and the old ways of life are passing into history.
A testimonial to Twain's repute as the most popular humorist of his day, these reminiscences crackle with comic anecdotes and energetic witticisms. Engrossing and entertaining, this volume will captivate devotees of Twain, steamboat buffs, lovers of Americana, and students of American literature.

Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (Dover Thrift Editions: Classic Novels)

by Mark Twain

Regarded by many as the most luminous example of Mark Twain's work, this fictional biography of Joan of Arc was purportedly written by Joan's page and secretary — Sieur Louis de Conté. (Twain's alter ego even shared the author's same initials — S. L. C.) Told from the viewpoint of this lifelong friend, the historical novel is a panorama of stirring scenes and marvel of pageantry — from Joan's early childhood in Domremy and her touching story of the voices, to the fight for Orleans, the taking of Tourelles and Jargeau, and the splendid march to Rheims.
But above all, the work is an amazing record that disclosed Twain's unrestrained admiration of the French heroine's nobility of character. Throughout his life, she remained his favorite historical figure — "the most innocent, the most lovely, the most adorable child the ages have produced."
Completed when the author was nearly sixty, the book reveals a splendidly expressive side of Twain, who wrote, "I like the Joan of Arc best of all my books; & it is the best; I know it perfectly well. And besides, it furnished me seven times the pleasure afforded me by any of the others: 12 years of preparation & 2 years of writing. The others needed no preparation, & got none."
Matchless in its workmanship, this lesser work will charm — and delightfully surprise — admirers and devotees of the great American author.

Mark Twain's Helpful Hints for Good Living: A Handbook for the Damned Human Race

by Mark Twain

Irreverent, charming, eminently quotable, this handbook―an eccentric etiquette guide for the human race―contains sixty-nine aphorisms, anecdotes, whimsical suggestions, maxims, and cautionary tales from Mark Twain's private and published writings. It dispenses advice and reflections on family life and public manners; opinions on topics such as dress, health, food, and childrearing and safety; and more specialized tips, such as those for dealing with annoying salesmen and burglars. Culled from Twain's personal letters, autobiographical writings, speeches, novels, and sketches, these pieces are delightfully fresh, witty, startlingly relevant, and bursting with Twain's characteristic ebullience for life. They also remind us exactly how Mark Twain came to be the most distinctive and well-known American literary voice in the world. These texts, some of them new or out of print for decades, have been selected and meticulously prepared by the editors at the Mark Twain Project.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

by Mark Twain

Referring to Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, H. L. Mencken noted that his discovery of this classic American novel was "the most stupendous event of my whole life"; Ernest Hemingway declared that "all modern American literature stems from this one book," while T. S. Eliot called Huck "one of the permanent symbolic figures of fiction, not unworthy to take a place with Ulysses, Faust, Don Quixote, Don Juan, Hamlet."
The novel's preeminence derives from its wonderfully imaginative re-creation of boyhood adventures along the mighty Mississippi River, its inspired characterization, the author's remarkable ear for dialogue, and the book's understated development of serious underlying themes: "natural" man versus "civilized" society, the evils of slavery, the innate value and dignity of human beings, the stultifying effects of convention, and other topics. But most of all, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a wonderful story ― filled with high adventure and unforgettable characters (including the great river itself) ― that no one who has read it will ever forget.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

by Mark Twain

From Library Journal With at least six unabridged recordings of Huckleberry Finn already available, what can another recording possibly offer that is new? The answer is plenty. For starters, this is apparently the only set of tapes to include a long passage known as the "raft chapter," which Twain reluctantly removed from the book's first edition. Restoration of that passage not only repairs the novel's disrupted continuity, it adds a specimen of 19th-century Southwestern humor and some of the most outrageous boasting ever preserved in print. It's a delight made all the more so by Patrick Fraley's reading, performed in a way never attempted before: in the voice of a teenage Huck, the story's narrator. Along the way, he gives individual voices to more than 100 characters. This type of reading can be a gamble; if it fails, the results may be unlistenable. However, Fraley succeeds brilliantly, adding dimensions not possible in standard readings. This masterpiece will make an ideal addition to any audio collection and is essential for libraries patronized by young readers.-R. Kent Rasmussen, Thousand Oaks, CA Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. Product Description A young boy living in mid-nineteenth century Missouri relates the many adventures that he and his friend Jim, an escaped slave, experience as they travel down the Mississippi River on a raft. Read by Patrick Fraley. Review "First-rate in all respects. If I gave an audio of the year, this title might well be it." -- Indianapolis Star, November, 1999"Fraley succeeds brilliantly, adding dimensions not possible in standard readings. This masterpiece will make an ideal addition to any collection…" -- Library Journal, February 2000"Mark Twain’s masterpiece Huckleberry Finn is given an absolutely virtuoso reading by Patrick Fraley." -- Arizona Daily Star, January 7, 2000"Run, skip, drive, walk quickly, swim or locomote to your audiobook supplier and procure a copy of Fraley’s sensational reading." -- AudioFile Magazine, Apr/May 2000"The engaging adolescent style that Fraley adopts for Mark Twain’s timeless hero makes this reading... the best yet." -- People Magazine, January 2000

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

by Mark Twain

The classic boyhood adventure tale, updated with a new introduction by noted Mark Twain scholar R. Kent Rasmussen and a foreword by Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran and The Republic of Imagination

In recent years, neither the persistent effort to “clean up” the racial epithets in Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn nor its consistent use in the classroom have diminished, highlighting the novel’s wide-ranging influence and its continued importance in American society. An incomparable adventure story, it is a vignette of a turbulent, yet hopeful epoch in American history, defining the experience of a nation in voices often satirical, but always authentic.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

by Mark Twain

The text of this new scholarly edition of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the first ever to be based on Mark Twain's complete, original manuscript―including its first 665 pages, which had been lost for over a hundred years when they turned up in 1990 in a Los Angeles attic. The text has been thoroughly re-edited using this manuscript, restoring thousands of details of wording, spelling, and punctuation which had been corrupted by Mark Twain's typist, typesetters, and proofreaders. It includes all of the 174 first edition illustrations by Edward Windsor Kemble, which the author called "most rattling good."

The editorial matter is extraordinarily rich. A new introduction tells the story of how Mark Twain's book was written, edited, published, and received, and spells out in detail the effect of the newly discovered manuscript on the text. Included are revised and updated maps of the Mississippi River valley, explanatory notes, glossary, and several documentary appendixes such as Twain's literary working notes, facsimile manuscript pages, facsimile reproductions of the author's revisions for his public reading tours, and contemporary advertisements and announcements. Also included are a description of the manuscript and all texts used in preparing this edition and complete lists of the author's revisions. The acclaimed 2001 Mark Twain Library edition (Library edition books are intended for general readers) was drawn from this comprehensive new scholarly edition in the Works of Mark Twain series.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

by Mark Twain

Introduction by George Saunders
Commentary by Thomas Perry Sergeant, Bernard DeVoto, Clifton Fadiman, T. S. Eliot, and Leo Marx
 
“All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn,” Ernest Hemingway wrote. “It’s the best book we’ve had.” A complex masterpiece that spawned controversy right from the start (it was banished from the Concord library shelves in 1885), it is at heart a compelling adventure story. Huck, in flight from his murderous father, and Jim, in flight from slavery, pilot their raft through treacherous waters, surviving a crash with a steamboat and betrayal by rogues. As Norman Mailer has said, “The mark of how good Huckleberry Finn has to be is that one can compare it to a number of our best modern American novels and it stands up page for page.”

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

by Mark Twain

Revel in Huck Finn's adventure on the Mississippi River with this handsome gift edition of the American masterpiece by Mark Twain.

A favorite among young readers and adults alike, Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, first published in 1884, is considered to be the author's masterpiece, as well asone of the best American novels ever written.

In order to escape his abusive father, Huckleberry Finn fakes his own death. He meets up with the runaway slave Jim, and the two begin a new, carefree life on a raft traversing the Mississippi River. Despite their travels bringing them more trouble than expected and the fear of being returned to their old lives, Huck Finn and Jim form a bond that helps protect them from the judgments of a hypocritical society that claims to value civilization even as it benefits from the horror of slavery.

This collectible edition features:

• An elegant faux-leather cover with foil-embossed designs
• Introduction by American literature scholar and professor Steven Frye
• Unabridged text
• A timeline of the life and times of Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Bantam Classics)

by Mark Twain

classic Tom Sawyer books

Pudd'nhead Wilson: Those Extraordinary Twins, the Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg

by Mark Twain

At the beginning of Pudd'nhead Wilson a young slave woman, fearing for her infant's son's life, exchanges her light-skinned child with her master's. From this rather simple premise Mark Twain fashioned one of his most entertaining, funny, yet biting novels. On its surface, Pudd'nhead Wilson possesses all the elements of an engrossing nineteenth-century mystery: reversed identities, a horrible crime, an eccentric detective, a suspenseful courtroom drama, and a surprising, unusual solution. Yet it is not a mystery novel. Seething with the undercurrents of antebellum southern culture, the book is a savage indictment in which the real criminal is society, and racial prejudice and slavery are the crimes. Written in 1894, Pudd'nhead Wilson glistens with characteristic Twain humor, with suspense, and with pointed irony: a gem among the author's later works.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (Bantam Classics)

by Mark Twain

This novel tells the story of Hank Morgan, the quintessential self-reliant New Englander who brings to King Arthur’s Age of Chivalry the “great and beneficent” miracles of nineteenth-century engineering and American ingenuity. Through the collision of past and present, Twain exposes the insubstantiality of both utopias, destroying the myth of the romantic ideal as well as his own era’s faith in scientific and social progress.

A central document in American intellectual history, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court is at once a hilarious comedy of anachronisms and incongruities, a romantic fantasy, a utopian vision, and a savage, anarchic social satire that only one of America’s greatest writers could pen.

The Bible According to Mark Twain: Irreverent Writings on Eden, Heaven, and the Flood by America's Master Satirist

by Mark Twain

An indispensable and provocative compilation of witty essays dealing with Biblical stories and their inconsistencies from America’s master satirist, Mark Twain.

The Bible According to Mark Twain is a selection of essays spanning forty years of his writing career, which touch on and satirize stories and figures from the Bible. In his characteristic style, Twain illustrates the inherent comedy and inconsistencies found within Holy Scripture, simultaneously entertaining and provoking questions about man’s place in the world and his relationship with God. An important installment in the Twain canon, this book is perfect for fans of America’s master satirist.

Classics Collection: Twain/Shakespeare/Poe/Dickinson

by Mark Twain, William Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, Jorge Luis Borges, Edgar Allan Poe

None

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Union Square Kids Unabridged Classics)

by Mark Twain

Who could forget the pranks, the adventures, the sheer fun of Tom Sawyer? It’s something every child should experience and every child will love. From Tom’s sly trickery with the whitewashed fence—when he cleverly manipulates everyone so they happily do his work for him—to his and Becky Thatcher’s calamities in Bat Cave, the enjoyment just never ends. The illustrations for this series were created by Scott McKowen, who, with his wife Christina Poddubiuk, operates Punch & Judy Inc., a company specializing in design and illustration for theater and performing arts. Their projects often involve research into the visual aspects of historical settings and characters. Christina is a theater set and costume designer and contributed advice on the period clothing for the illustrations.

Scott created these drawings in scratchboard an engraving medium which evokes the look of popular art from the period of these stories. Scratchboard is an illustration board with a specifically prepared surface of hard white chalk. A thin layer of black ink is rolled over the surface, and lines are drawn by hand with a sharp knife by scraping through the ink layer to expose the white surface underneath. The finished drawings are then scanned and the color is added digitally.

Mark Twain (Stories for Young People)

by Mark Twain, Gregg Camfield

With their humor, vivid language, and irreverence, these five stories by Samuel Langhorne Clemens--better known to the world as Mark Twain--will simply delight young readers everywhere. Outstanding paintings by artist Sally Wern Comport add to the amusement of such unique tales as "An Encounter with an Interviewer" and the brief, but pointed, "A Fable." Youngsters will especially appreciate the slyly witty "Advice to Youth," an actual talk Twain delivered to a group of girls in 1882. Sympathetic to children's rebellious yearnings, he turned the traditional moral lectures of his time upside down: "First I will say to you, young friends...Always obey your parents, when they are present. This is the best policy in the long run; because if you don't, they will make you." A perfect way to whet children's appetites and prepare them for Twain's complete novels.

Dr. Gregg Camfield is the editor of The Oxford Companion to Mark Twain and author of Sentimental Twain and Necessary Madness: The Humor of Domesticity in Nineteenth-Century American Literature. Since 1996, he has been a Professor of English at the University of the Pacific.

Sally Wern Comport has won awards from the Society of Illustrators, Communication Arts Magazine, Print Magazine, and Spectrum. Her recent books include Young Reader's Shakespeare: Hamlet, Poetry for Young People: American Poetry, Brave Margaret, and The Great Expedition of Lewis and Clark. She serves on the faculty of the Maryland Institute College of Art.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (The Classic Collection)

by Mark Twain

Product Description
From the pen of America's master, Mark Twain, comes this classic and beloved story of boyhood freedom.

When we first met "the pariah of the village…the son of the drunkard" in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Tom was "under strict orders not to play with him," so he played with him every time he got the chance. Twain took his most outrageous and outcast character (and perhaps the one he loved the most), Huckleberry Finn, from that timeless tale and wrote his own adventures.

This giant work, in addition to entertaining boys and girls for generations, has defined the first-person novel in America and continues to demand study, inspire reverence, and stir controversy in our time.

This novel is part of Brilliance Audio's extensive Classic Collection, bringing you timeless masterpieces that you and your family are sure to love.

About the Author
Mark Twain is the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835 - 1910). He is the author of the beloved classics The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Life on the Mississippi, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and The Prince and the Pauper.

The Diary of Adam and Eve (Hesperus Classics)

by Mark Twain

Written in diary form, The Diary of Adam and Eve is an ingenious, witty, and ultimately delightful retelling of the dawn of human creation with many a grain of truth for today's gender disputes. Master storyteller Mark Twain hilariously recreates the very first days, portraying Adam as something of a recluse, and a man who is ill prepared for the arrival of Eve, a talkative, emotional, and highly charged female. Yet in time, and after many moments of conflict, they begin to learn to live together and come to realize that men and women can, in fact, exist in harmony.

Tom Sawyer, Detective (Hesperus Classics)

by Mark Twain

Mark Twain’s two most famous creations, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, are reunited in this high-spirited and captivating tale of mystery and murder in deepest Arkansas. When Tom and Huck are invited to stay at Tom’s uncle’s farm in Arkansas, they jump at the opportunity to escape the tedium of a long winter at home. A chance encounter on a steamboat downriver, though, leads to a complex plot of diamond heists, mistaken identity, and murder, involving the two boys in a bigger adventure than even they had in mind. Huck’s typically bemused, folksy narration provides a poignant contrast to Tom’s frenetic ingenuity, as the mystery begins tortuously to unravel, and it is in these two wryly affectionate portrayals that Twain breaths life and humor into his charming, unjustly neglected tale. Mark Twain is one of America’s greatest writers. His best-loved work, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, is widely considered to be the first modern American novel.

How to Tell a Story: A Compendium of Sketches, Speeches, Letters and Tales

by Mark Twain, Carl Reiner

In a priceless collection Grammy nominee (Letters from the Earth)and Twain aficionado Carl Reiner introduces a sampling of Twain's shorter works, drawn from his many speeches, lectures, and letters.

Some of the topics Twain covers are: How to Tell A Story, his private history of how he came to write his most popular tall tale, The Jumping Frog of Cavaleras County; On the Decay of the Art of Lying, his humorous reflection on what he considered a dying art form; My First Lie and How I Got Out of It, a reminiscence from his childhood days in Missouri; the hilarious Answers to Correspondents, drawn from his voluminous letters back and forth to fans; Concerning the Jews, Twain's very strong condemnation of anti-Semitism, My Debut as a Literary Person, a serious reflection on an incident from his riverboat captain days and how the experience inspired him as a writer in terms of story-telling, detail, and point of view; and An Encounter With An Interviewer (the interviewer loses). And there's a special section for children: the Story of the Bad Little Boy and the Story of the good Little Boy, Advice for Good Little Girls, and some Learned Fables for Good Old Boys and Girls, where his affection for children and trademark humor shine through these parables.

Pudd'nhead Wilson (Dover Thrift Editions) (Dover Thrift Editions: Classic Novels)

by Mark Twain

Switched at birth by a young slave woman attempting to protect her son from the horrors of slavery, a light-skinned infant changes places with the master's white son. This simple premise is the basis of Pudd'nhead Wilson, a compelling drama that contains all the elements of a classic 19th-century mystery: reversed identities, a ghastly crime, an eccentric detective, and a tense courtroom scene.
First published in 1894, Twain's novel bristles with suspense. David "Pudd’nhead" Wilson, a wise but unorthodox lawyer who collects fingerprints as a hobby, wins back the respect of his townspeople when he solves a local murder in which two foreigners are falsely accused. Witty and absorbing, this novel features a literary first — the use of fingerprinting to solve a crime. This gem was Twain's last novel about the antebellum South; and despite its frequent injections of humor, it offers a fierce condemnation of racial prejudice and a society that condoned slavery.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer: A Novel (Vintage Classics)

by Mark Twain

Mark Twain was one of the nineteenth century's greatest chroniclers of childhood, and of all his works his beloved novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer most enchantingly and timelessly captures the sheer pleasure of being a boy.

Tom Sawyer is as clever, imaginative, and resourceful as he is reckless and mischievous, whether conning his friends into painting a fence, playing pirates with his pal Huck Finn, witnessing his own funeral, or helping to catch a murderer. Twain’s novel glows with nostalgia for the Mississippi River towns of his youth and sparkles with his famous humor, but it is also woven throughout with a subtle awareness of the injustices and complexities of the old South that Twain so memorably portrays.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Vintage Classics)

by Mark Twain

Long cherished by readers of all ages: the hilarious account of an incorrigible truant and a powerful parable of innocence in conflict with the fallen adult world—from the author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and "the father of American literature" (William Faukner, Nobel Prize-Winning Author).

"All modern literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn… It's the best book we've had. All American writing comes from that." —Ernest Hemingway, Nobel Prize-Winning Author of The Sun Also Rises

The mighty Mississippi River of the antebellum South gives the novel both its colorful backdrop and its narrative shape, as the runaways Huck and Jim—a young rebel against civilization allied with an escaped slave—drift down its length on a flimsy raft. Their journey, at times rollickingly funny but always deadly serious in its potential consequences, takes them ever deeper into the slave-holding South, and our appreciation of their shared humanity grows as we watch them travel physically farther from yet morally closer to the freedom they both passionately seek.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

by Mark Twain

The classic boyhood adventure tale in a beautiful Deluxe Edition illustrated by Lilli Carre

Mark Twain's tale of a boy's picaresque journey down the Mississippi on a raft conveyed the voice and experience of the American frontier as no other work had done before. When Huck escapes from his drunken father and the 'sivilizing' Widow Douglas with the runaway slave Jim, he embarks on a series of adventures that draw him to feuding families and the trickery of the unscrupulous 'Duke' and 'Dauphin'. Beneath the exploits, however, are more serious undercurrents - of slavery, adult control and, above all, of Huck's struggle between his instinctive goodness and the corrupt values of society, which threaten his deep and enduring friendship with Jim.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Puffin Classics)

by Mark Twain

They're Puffin Classics for a reason, it's because they're the best

Tom Sawyer is sure to find trouble wherever the river leads him . . .

On the banks of the Mississippi River, Tom Sawyer and his friends seek out adventure at every turn. Then one fateful night in the graveyard they witness a murder. The boys make a blood oath never to reveal the secret, and they run away to be pirates in search of hidden treasure. But when Tom gets trapped in a cave with scary Injun Joe, can he escape unharmed?

Great Short Works of Mark Twain (Perennial Classics)

by Mark Twain

Selected short works of humor and criticism by a revered American master
Beloved by millions, Mark Twain is the quintessential American writer. More than anyone else, his blend of skepticism, caustic wit and sharp prose defines a certain American mythos. While his novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is still taught to nearly everyone who attends school and is considered by many to be the Great American Novel, Twain’s shorter stories and criticisms have unequalled style and bite.
In a review that’s less than kind to the writing of James Fenimore Cooper, Twain writes: “Every time a Cooper person is in peril, and absolute silence is worth four dollars a minute, he is sure to step on a dry twig. There may be a hundred handier things to step on, but that wouldn’t satisfy Cooper. Cooper requires him to turn out and find a dry twig; and if he can’t do it, go and borrow one.” It’s difficult to imagine anyone else writing in quite this style, though many have tried, which is why Twain’s legacy only continues to grow.
The collection includes 20 works, including: Old Times on the Mississippi The Mysterious Stranger The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg The Jumping Frog Jim Baker's Bluejay Yarn A True Story Letter to the Earth The War Prayer

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Harper Perennial Deluxe Editions)

by Mark Twain

A nineteenth-century boy from a Mississippi River town recounts his adventures as he travels down the river with a runaway slave, encountering a family involved in a feud, two scoundrels pretending to be royalty, and Tom Sawyer's aunt who mistakes him for Tom.

Life on the Mississippi (Penguin Classics)

by Mark Twain

In 1882 Mark Twain returned to the river of his childhood, determined to write the definitive travel book on the Mississippi.

Life on the Mississippi is no ordinary guided tour, for every page is expressive of the structure, style and high humour that is the very essence of Twain the writer. Spiced with Twain's pungent observations and commentaries on the culture and society of the great river valley, the book is a wonderful collection of lively anecdotes, tall tales and character sketches; historical facts and information; and reminiscences of the author's boyhood and experiences as a steamboat pilot. Life on the Mississippi, in its composition and substance, is intricately related to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In his introduction, James M. Cox suggests that in writing this travelogue Twain discovered the truths that form the heart of the odyssey depicted in his masterpiece, Huckleberry Finn.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Roughing It

by Mark Twain, Samuel Langhorne Clemens

A marvelously vivid, many-sided portrait of America's frontier days.

Mark Twain's rambling took him all over the American West during teh 1860's. He prospected for gold and silver, speculated on timber and mining stocks, sailed to Hawaii, and worked for a succession of small newspapers. In Roughing It, his fictionalized account of these years, tall tales abound, as do sketches of unforgettable characters: desperadoes, vigilantes, newspapermen, Mormons, and prospectors.

Twain's Debt to the burlesque styling of regional humorists and his celebrated gift for accurately rendering regional speech are never more in evidence than here, but as Hamlin Hill points out in his introduction, Roughing It must also be read as Twain's renunciation of his footloose bachelorhood, his rejection of the mythic, romanticized image of the West, and his autopsy of the American dream.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Roughing It

by Mark Twain, Samuel Langhorne Clemens

For modern-day adventurers exploring the roots of the old west.
Part fact, part fiction, Mark Twain’s Roughing It takes readers on a high-spirited journey from Missouri to Nevada, California to Hawaii. Travel via stagecoach through woods, plains, hills, and gorges, as Twain spins yarn after yarn on the people he meets, and the towns they explore. Originally published in 1872, this semi-autobiographical semi-prequel to Innocents Abroad satirizes American and Western society in a way that only Mark Twain knows how.
Twain's esteemed wit, paired with the contemporary cover design, makes this a classic that book lovers won't be able to resist.

Roughing It

by Mark Twain, Samuel Langhorne Clemens

The celebrated author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn mixes fact and fiction in a rousing travelogue that serves as “a portrait of the artist as a young adventurer.”*

In 1861, young Mark Twain found himself adrift as a newcomer in the Wild West, working as a civil servant, silver prospector, mill worker, and finally a reporter and traveling lecturer. Roughing It is the hilarious record of those early years traveling from Nevada to California to Hawaii, as Twain tried his luck at anything and everything—and usually failed. Twain’s encounters with tarantulas and donkeys, vigilantes and volcanoes, even Brigham Young, the Mormon leader, come to life with his inimitable mixture of reporting, social satire, and rollicking tall tales.

With an Introduction by Elizabeth Frank*
And a New Afterword by Mark Dawidziak

A Tramp Abroad (Penguin Classics)

by Mark Twain

Twain's account of travelling in Europe, A TRAMP ABROAD (1880), sparkles with the author's shrewd observations and highly opinionated comments on Old World culture, and showcases his unparalleled ability to integrate humorous sketches, autobiographical tidbits, and historical anecdotes in a consistently entertaining narrative. Cast in the form of a walking tour through Germany, Switzerland, France and Italy, A TRAMP ABROAD includes among its adventures a voyage by raft down the Neckar and an ascent of Mount Blanc by telescope, as well as the author's attempts to study art - a wholly imagined activity Twain 'authenticated' with his own wonderfully primitive pictures included in this volume.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The Prince and the Pauper (Penguin Classics)

by Mark Twain

Tom Canty and Edward Tudor could have been identical twins. Their birthdays match, their faces match, but there the likeness stops. For Edward is a prince, heir to King Henry VIII, whilst Tom is a miserable pauper. But when fate intervenes, Edward is thrown out of the palace in rags, leaving ignorant Tom to play the part of a royal prince. Even those who have never read the novel will be familiar with Twain's classic tale of mistaken identity: at once an adventure story and a fantasy of timeless appeal.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Puddnhead Wilson By Twain Mark Bradbury Malcolm EDT

by Mark Twain

At the beginning of Pudd'nhead Wilson a young slave woman, fearing for her infant's son's life, exchanges her light-skinned child with her master's. From this rather simple premise Mark Twain fashioned one of his most entertaining, funny, yet biting novels. On its surface, Pudd'nhead Wilson possesses all the elements of an engrossing nineteenth-century mystery: reversed identities, a horrible crime, an eccentric detective, a suspenseful courtroom drama, and a surprising, unusual solution. Yet it is not a mystery novel. Seething with the undercurrents of antebellum southern culture, the book is a savage indictment in which the real criminal is society, and racial prejudice and slavery are the crimes. Written in 1894, Pudd'nhead Wilson glistens with characteristic Twain humor, with suspense, and with pointed irony: a gem among the author's later works.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (English Library)

by Mark Twain

When Connecticut mechanic and foreman Hank Morgan is knocked unconscious, he wakes not to the familiar scenes of nineteenth-century America but to the bewildering sights and sounds of sixth-century Camelot. Although confused at first and quickly imprisoned, he soon realises that his knowledge of the future can transform his fate. Correctly predicting a solar eclipse from inside his prison cell, Morgan terrifies the people of England into releasing him and swiftly establishes himself as the most powerful magician in the land, stronger than Merlin and greatly admired by Arthur himself. But the Connecticut Yankee wishes for more than simply a place at the Round Table. Soon, he begins a far greater struggle: to bring American democratic ideals to Old England. Complex and fascinating, A Connecticut Yankee is a darkly comic consideration of the nature of human nature and society.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The Portable Mark Twain (Penguin Classics)

by Mark Twain

Satirist, novelist, and keen observer of the American scene, Mark Twain remains one of the world's best-loved writers. This delightful collection of Twain's favorite and most memorable writings includes selected tales and sketches such as The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, How I Edited an Agricultural Journal Once, Jim Baker's Blue-Jay Yarn, and A True Story. It also features excerpts from his novels and travel books (including Roughing It, The Innocents Abroad, and Life on the Mississippi, among others; autobiographical and polemical writings; as well as selected letters and speeches. The collection also reprints the complete text of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, including the often omitted raftsmen passage.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Puffin Classics)

by Mark Twain

Huckleberry Finn had a tough life with his drunk father until an adventure with Tom Sawyer changed everything. But when Huck's dad returns and kidnaps him, he must escpe down the Mississippi river with runaway slave, Jim. They encounter trouble at every turn, from floods and gunfights to armed bandits and the long arm of the law. Through it all the friends stick together - but can Huck and Tom free Jim from slavery once and for all? With an inspirational introduction by Darren Shan, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is one of the twenty wonderful classic stories being relaunched in Puffin Classics in March 2015.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Penguin Clothbound Classics)

by Mark Twain

Mark Twain's great American masterpiece, in a gorgeous new clothbound edition designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith. These delectable and collectible Penguin editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design Mark Twain's tale of a boy's picaresque journey down the Mississippi on a raft conveyed the voice and experience of the American frontier as no other work had done before. When Huck escapes from his drunken father and the 'sivilizing' Widow Douglas with the runaway slave Jim, he embarks on a series of adventures that draw him to feuding families and the trickery of the unscrupulous 'Duke' and 'Dauphin'. Beneath the exploits, however, are more serious undercurrents - of slavery, adult control and, above all, of Huck's struggle between his instinctive goodness and the corrupt values of society, which threaten his deep and enduring friendship with Jim. Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens on 30th November 1835, in Florida, Missouri. In 1853 he left home, earning a living as an itinerant type-setter, and four years later became an apprentice pilot on the Mississippi, a career cut short by the outbreak of the Civil War. For five years, as a prospector and a journalist, Clemens lived in Nevada and California. In February 1863 he first used the pseudonym 'Mark Twain' as the signature to a humorous travel letter. A trip to Europe and the Holy Land in 1867 became the basis of his first major book, The Innocents Abroad (1869). His numerous subsequent books include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), A Tramp Aborad (1880), The Prince and the Pauper (1882), and his masterpiece, The Adventures of Huckleberry Fin (1885). Twain died on 21st April 1910. 'The best book we've had' - Ernest Hemingway

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Penguin Classics)

by Mark Twain

The classic boyhood adventure tale, updated with a new introduction by noted Mark Twain scholar R. Kent Rasmussen. Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read

A consummate prankster with a quick wit, Tom Sawyer dreams of a bigger fate than simply being a “rich boy.” Yet through the novel’s humorous escapades—from the famous episode of the whitewashed fence to the trial of Injun Joe—Mark Twain explores the deeper themes of the adult world, one of dishonesty and superstition, murder and revenge, starvation and slavery.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Oxford World's Classics)

by Mark Twain

You don't know about me, without you have read a book by the name of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", but that ain't no matter.

So begins, in characteristic fashion, one of the greatest American novels. Narrated by a poor, illiterate white boy living in America's deep South before the Civil War, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the story of Huck's escape from his brutal father and the relationship that grows between him and Jim, the slave who is fleeing from an even more brutal oppression. As they journey down the Mississippi their adventures address some of the most profound human conundrums: the prejudices of class, age, and colour are pitted against the qualities of hope, courage, and moral character.

Enormously influential in the development of American literature, Huckleberry Finn remains a controversial novel at the centre of impassioned critical debate. This edition discusses all the current issues and the evolution of Mark Twain's penetrating genius.

About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain: Introduction by Adam Gopnik (Everyman's Library Classics Series)

by Mark Twain

These sixty satirical, rollicking, uproarious tales by the greatest yarn-spinner in our literary history are as fresh and vivid as ever more than a century after their author’s death.

Mark Twain’s famous novels Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn have long been hailed as major achievements, but the father of American literature also made his mark as a master of the humorous short story. All the tales he wrote over the course of his lengthy career are gathered here, including such immortal classics as “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg," “The Diary of Adam and Eve,” and “The $30,000 Bequest.” Twain’s inimitable wit, his nimble plotting, and his unerring insight into human nature are on full display in these wonderfully entertaining stories.

Bite-Size Twain: Wit and Wisdom from the Literary Legend

by Mark Twain

Mark Twain...

On kindness: Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.

On friends: Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.

On growing old: Take any road you please...it curves always, which is a continual promise, whereas straight roads reveal everything at a glance and kill interest.

On truth and lies: many when they come to die have spent all the truth that was in them, and enter the next world as paupers. I have saved up enough to make an astonishment there.

On health and fitness: Part of the secret success in life is to eat what you like and let the food it out inside.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (Modern Library Classics)

by Mark Twain

Hank Morgan awakens one morning to find he has been transported from nineteenth-century New England to sixth-century England and the reign of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Morgan brings to King Arthur’s utopian court the ingenuity of the future, resulting in a culture clash that is at once satiric, anarchic, and darkly comic.

Critically deemed one of Twain’s finest and most caustic works, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court is both a delightfully entertaining story and a disturbing analysis of the efficacy of government, the benefits of progress, and the dissolution of social mores. It remains as powerful a work of fiction today as it was upon its first publication in 1889.

The Prince and the Pauper (Modern Library Classics)

by Mark Twain

Set in sixteenth-century England, Mark Twain’s classic “tale for young people of all ages” features two identical-looking boys—a prince and a pauper—who trade clothes and step into each other’s lives. While the urchin, Tom Canty, discovers luxury and power, Prince Edward, dressed in rags, roams his kingdom and experiences the cruelties inflicted on the poor by the Tudor monarchy. As Christopher Paul Curtis observes in his Introduction, The Prince and the Pauper is “funny, adventurous, and exciting, yet also chock-full of . . . exquisitely reasoned harangues against society’s ills.”

This Modern Library Paperback Classic is set from the Mark Twain Project edition, which is the approved text of the Center for Scholarly Editions of the Modern Language Association.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Signet Classics)

by Mark Twain

Rich in color and humor, this great novel follows the adventures of Huckleberry Finn and vividly recreates the world, the people, and the language that Mark Twain knew and loved from his own years on the frontier of the Mississippi.

He has no mother, his father is a brutal drunkard, and he sleeps in a hogshead. He’s Huck Finn, a homeless waif, a liar and thief on occasion, and a casual rebel against respectability. But on the day he encounters another fugitive from trouble, a runaway slave named Jim, he also finds—for the first time in his life—love, acceptance, and a sense of responsibility. And it is in the exciting and moving story of these two outcasts fleeing down the Mississippi on a raft that a wonderful metamorphosis occurs. The boy nobody wants becomes a courageous human being with a sense of his own destiny.

Includes an Introduction by Padgett Powell
and an Afterword by Jayne Anne Phillips

Life on the Mississippi (Signet Classics)

by Mark Twain

At once a romantic history of a mighty river, an autobiographical account of Twain's early steamboat days, and a storehouse of humorous anecdotes and sketches, here is the raw material from which Mark Twain wrote his finest novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Hannibal, Missouri, on the banks of the Mississippi River, was host to riverboat travelers from around the world, providing a vigorous and variable atmosphere for the young Samuel Clemens to absorb. Clemens became a riverboat pilot and even chose his pen name—Mark Twain—from a term boatmen would call out signifying water depth at two fathoms, meaning safe clearance for travel. It was from this background that Life on the Mississippi emerged. It is an epochal record of America’s growth, a stirring remembrance of her vanished past. And it earned for its author his first recognition as a serious writer.

With an Introduction by Justin Kaplan
and an Afterword by John Seelye

Pudd'nhead Wilson

by Mark Twain

Mark Twain takes a hard look at the consequences of slavery in America in this classic satire.

Set in a town on the Mississippi during the pre-Civil War era, Pudd’nhead Wilson tackles the seminal American issue of slavery in a tragicomedy of switched identities. What happens when a child born free and a child born a slave change places? The result is a biting social commentary with enduring relevance, and a good old-fashioned murder mystery. It also introduces one of Twain’s favorite characters: Pudd’nhead Wilson, an intellectual with a penchant for amateur sleuthing. F.R. Leavis proclaimed this novel “the masterly work of a great writer.”

With an Introduction by Louis Budd

The Innocents Abroad (Signet Classics)

by Mark Twain

One of the most famous travel books ever written by an American, The Innocents Abroad is Mark Twain’s irreverent and incisive commentary on nineteenth century Americans encountering the Old World.

Come along for the ride as Twain and his unsuspecting travel companions visit the Azores, Tangiers, Paris, Rome, the Vatican, Genoa, Gibraltar, Odessa, Constantinople, Cairo, the Holy Land and other locales renowned in history. No person or place is safe from Twain’s sharp wit as it impales both the conservative and the liberal, the Old World and the New. He uses these contrasts to “find out who we as Americans are,” notes Leslie A. Fiedler. But his travelogue demonstrates that, in our attempt to understand ourselves, we must first find out what we are not.

With an Introduction Michael Meyer and an Afterword by Leslie A. Fiedler

The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories

by Mark Twain

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.

The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories

by Mark Twain

Nine tales showcase Twain's wit as he skewers greed and hypocrisy—and makes a memorable, tormenting statement on evil.

The Annotated Huckleberry Finn (The Annotated Books)

by Mark Twain

A sumptuous annotated edition of the great American novel. "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn," Ernest Hemingway once declared. First published in 1885, the book has delighted millions of readers, while simultaneously riling contemporary sensibilities, and is still banned in many schools and libraries. Now, Michael Patrick Hearn, author of the best-selling The Annotated Wizard of Oz, thoroughly reexamines the 116-year heritage of that archetypal American boy, Huck Finn, and follows his adventures along every bend of the mighty Mississippi River. Hearn's copious annotations draw on primary sources including the original manuscript, Twain's revisions and letters, and period accounts. Reproducing the original E. W. Kemble illustrations from the first edition, as well as countless archival photographs and drawings, some of them previously unpublished, The Annotated Huckleberry Finn is a book no family's library can do without; it may well prove to be the classic edition of the great American novel. 274 illustrations, two-color throughout

Autobiography of Mark Twain: Volume 1, Reader’s Edition (Mark Twain Papers)

by Mark Twain

The year 2010 marked the 100th anniversary of Mark Twain’s death. In celebration of this important milestone and in honor of the cherished tradition of publishing Mark Twain’s works, UC Press published Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1, the first of a projected three-volume edition of the complete, uncensored autobiography. The book became an immediate bestseller and was hailed as the capstone of the life’s work of America’s favorite author.

This Reader’s Edition, a portable paperback in larger type, republishes the text of the hardcover Autobiography in a form that is convenient for the general reader, without the editorial explanatory notes. It includes a brief introduction describing the evolution of Mark Twain’s ideas about writing his autobiography, as well as a chronology of his life, brief family biographies, and an excerpt from the forthcoming Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2―a controversial but characteristically humorous attack on Christian doctrine.

Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 3: The Complete and Authoritative Edition (Volume 12) (Mark Twain Papers)

by Mark Twain

The surprising final chapter of a great American life.

When the first volume of Mark Twain’s uncensored Autobiography was published in 2010, it was hailed as an essential addition to the shelf of his works and a crucial document for our understanding of the great humorist’s life and times. This third and final volume crowns and completes his life’s work. Like its companion volumes, it chronicles Twain's inner and outer life through a series of daily dictations that go wherever his fancy leads.

Created from March 1907 to December 1909, these dictations present Mark Twain at the end of his life: receiving an honorary degree from Oxford University; railing against Theodore Roosevelt; founding numerous clubs; incredulous at an exhibition of the Holy Grail; credulous about the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays; relaxing in Bermuda; observing (and investing in) new technologies. The Autobiography’s “Closing Words” movingly commemorate his daughter Jean, who died on Christmas Eve 1909. Also included in this volume is the previously unpublished “Ashcroft-Lyon Manuscript,” Mark Twain’s caustic indictment of his “putrescent pair” of secretaries and the havoc that erupted in his house during their residency.

Fitfully published in fragments at intervals throughout the twentieth century, Autobiography of Mark Twain has now been critically reconstructed and made available as it was intended to be read. Fully annotated by the editors of the Mark Twain Project, the complete Autobiography emerges as a landmark publication in American literature.

Editors: Benjamin Griffin and Harriet Elinor Smith
Associate Editors: Victor Fischer, Michael B. Frank, Amanda Gagel, Sharon K. Goetz, Leslie Diane Myrick, Christopher M. Ohge

Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2: The Complete and Authoritative Edition (Volume 11) (Mark Twain Papers)

by Mark Twain

Mark Twain’s complete, uncensored Autobiography was an instant bestseller when the first volume was published in 2010, on the centennial of the author’s death, as he requested. Published to rave reviews, the Autobiography was hailed as the capstone of Twain’s career. It captures his authentic and unsuppressed voice, speaking clearly from the grave and brimming with humor, ideas, and opinions.

The eagerly-awaited Volume 2 delves deeper into Mark Twain’s life, uncovering the many roles he played in his private and public worlds. Filled with his characteristic blend of humor and ire, the narrative ranges effortlessly across the contemporary scene. He shares his views on writing and speaking, his preoccupation with money, and his contempt for the politics and politicians of his day. Affectionate and scathing by turns, his intractable curiosity and candor are everywhere on view.

Editors: Benjamin Griffin and Harriet E. Smith
Associate Editors: Victor Fischer, Michael B. Frank, Sharon K. Goetz and Leslie Diane Myrick

Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 1

by Mark Twain

"I've struck it!" Mark Twain wrote in a 1904 letter to a friend. "And I will give it away―to you. You will never know how much enjoyment you have lost until you get to dictating your autobiography." Thus, after dozens of false starts and hundreds of pages, Twain embarked on his "Final (and Right) Plan" for telling the story of his life. His innovative notion―to "talk only about the thing which interests you for the moment"―meant that his thoughts could range freely. The strict instruction that many of these texts remain unpublished for 100 years meant that when they came out, he would be "dead, and unaware, and indifferent," and that he was therefore free to speak his "whole frank mind." The year 2010 marks the 100th anniversary of Twain's death. In celebration of this important milestone and in honor of the cherished tradition of publishing Mark Twain's works, UC Press is proud to offer for the first time Mark Twain's uncensored autobiography in its entirety and exactly as he left it. This major literary event brings to readers, admirers, and scholars the first of three volumes and presents Mark Twain's authentic and unsuppressed voice, brimming with humor, ideas, and opinions, and speaking clearly from the grave as he intended.

Editors:

Harriet E. Smith, Benjamin Griffin, Victor Fischer, Michael B. Frank, Sharon K. Goetz, Leslie Myrick

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer: The Authoritative Text with Original Illustrations (Mark Twain Library)

by Mark Twain

A beautiful hardcover repackaging of this timeless classic from the publishers of the Autobiography of Mark Twain and in partnership with the Mark Twain Project.

This definitive edition of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, one of the world’s best-loved books, was the first version since the original publication to be based directly on the author’s manuscript. It includes all of the “200 rattling pictures” Mark Twain commissioned from one of his favorite illustrators, True W. Williams. Prepared by the Mark Twain Papers, the official archive of Sam Clemens’s papers at the University of California, Berkeley, this volume also contains a wealth of helpful explanatory notes, along with a selection of original documents by Mark Twain, including several letters in his inimitable voice about writing Tom Sawyer and about its original publication—everything the discerning reader needs to enjoy this classic of American literature again and again.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: The Authoritative Text with Original Illustrations (Volume 9) (Mark Twain Library)

by Mark Twain

A beautiful hardcover repackaging of this timeless classic from the publishers of the Autobiography of Mark Twain and in partnership with the Mark Twain Project.

This definitive edition of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was the only version of Mark Twain’s masterpiece based on his complete manuscript, including the 663 pages found in a Los Angeles attic in 1990. Prepared by the Mark Twain Papers, the official archive of Sam Clemens’s papers at the University of California, Berkeley, this volume features the gorgeous original illustrations that Twain commissioned from Edward Windsor Kemble and John Harley and also includes historical notes, a glossary, maps, selected manuscript pages, and even a gallery of letters, advertisements, and playbills from Twain’s first “book tour” to promote the original publication—everything the discerning reader needs to enjoy this classic of American literature again and again.

Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain (Bantam Classics)

by Mark Twain

For deft plotting, riotous inventiveness, unforgettable characters, and language that brilliantly captures the lively rhythms of American speech, no American writer comes close to Mark Twain. This sparkling anthology covers the entire span of Twain’s inimitable yarn-spinning, from his early broad comedy to the biting satire of his later years.

Every one of his sixty stories is here: ranging from the frontier humor of “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” to the bitter vision of humankind in “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg,” to the delightful hilarity of “Is He Living or Is He Dead?” Surging with Twain’s ebullient wit and penetrating insight into the follies of human nature, this volume is a vibrant summation of the career of–in the words of H. L. Mencken–“the father of our national literature.”

The Purloining of Prince Oleomargarine

by Mark Twain, Philip C. Stead

New York Times Bestseller!
A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year

A never-before-published, previously unfinished Mark Twain children’s story is brought to life by Philip and Erin Stead, creators of the Caldecott Medal-winning A Sick Day for Amos McGee.

In a hotel in Paris one evening in 1879, Mark Twain sat with his young daughters, who begged their father for a story. Twain began telling them the tale of Johnny, a poor boy in possession of some magical seeds. Later, Twain would jot down some rough notes about the story, but the tale was left unfinished . . . until now.

Plucked from the Mark Twain archive at the University of California at Berkeley, Twain’s notes now form the foundation of a fairy tale picked up over a century later. With only Twain’s fragmentary script and a story that stops partway as his guide, author Philip Stead has written a tale that imagines what might have been if Twain had fully realized this work.

Johnny, forlorn and alone except for his pet chicken, meets a kind woman who gives him seeds that change his fortune, allowing him to speak with animals and sending him on a quest to rescue a stolen prince. In the face of a bullying tyrant king, Johnny and his animal friends come to understand that generosity, empathy, and quiet courage are gifts more precious in this world than power and gold.

Illuminated by Erin Stead’s graceful, humorous, and achingly poignant artwork, this is a story that reaches through time and brings us a new book from America’s most legendary writer, envisioned by two of today’s most important names in children’s literature.

A Bank Street College of Education Best Children's Book of the Year

"Will capture the imaginations of readers of all ages"—USA Today, ★ ★ ★ ★ (out of four stars)

★ "Samuel Langhorne Clemens himself would be proud."—Booklist, starred review

★ "A cast of eccentric characters, celestially fine writing, and a crusade against pomp that doesn't sacrifice humor."—Publishers Weekly, starred review

★ "Completing a story penned by arguably America's greatest author is no easy feat, but the Caldecott-winning author-illustrator (and husband-wife) team proves more than equal to the task. . . . A pensive and whimsical work that Twain would applaud."—Kirkus, starred review

★ "The combination of Twain’s (often sarcastic) humor and “lessons of life,” a touch of allegory, and Stead’s own storytelling skills result in an awesome piece of fantasy."—School Library Journal, starred review

★ "Beautifully understated and nuanced illustrations by Erin Stead add the finishing flourishes to this remarkable work."—Shelf Awareness, starred review

“drawn with a graceful crosshatched intelligence that seems close to the best of Wyeth.”—Adam Gopnik, The New York Times

"Twain and the two Steads have created what could become a read-aloud classic, perfect for families to enjoy together."—The Horn Book

"Artful and meta and elegant”—The Wall Street Journal

"Should inspire readers young and old to seek further adventures with Twain."—The Washington Post

The Purloining of Prince Oleomargarine

by Mark Twain, Philip C. Stead

New York Times Bestseller!
A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year

A never-before-published, previously unfinished Mark Twain children’s story is brought to life by Philip and Erin Stead, creators of the Caldecott Medal-winning A Sick Day for Amos McGee.

In a hotel in Paris one evening in 1879, Mark Twain sat with his young daughters, who begged their father for a story. Twain began telling them the tale of Johnny, a poor boy in possession of some magical seeds. Later, Twain would jot down some rough notes about the story, but the tale was left unfinished . . . until now.

Plucked from the Mark Twain archive at the University of California at Berkeley, Twain’s notes now form the foundation of a fairy tale picked up over a century later. With only Twain’s fragmentary script and a story that stops partway as his guide, author Philip Stead has written a tale that imagines what might have been if Twain had fully realized this work.

Johnny, forlorn and alone except for his pet chicken, meets a kind woman who gives him seeds that change his fortune, allowing him to speak with animals and sending him on a quest to rescue a stolen prince. In the face of a bullying tyrant king, Johnny and his animal friends come to understand that generosity, empathy, and quiet courage are gifts more precious in this world than power and gold.

Illuminated by Erin Stead’s graceful, humorous, and achingly poignant artwork, this is a story that reaches through time and brings us a new book from America’s most legendary writer, envisioned by two of today’s most important names in children’s literature.

A Bank Street College of Education Best Children's Book of the Year

"Will capture the imaginations of readers of all ages"—USA Today, ★ ★ ★ ★ (out of four stars)

★ "Samuel Langhorne Clemens himself would be proud."—Booklist, starred review

★ "A cast of eccentric characters, celestially fine writing, and a crusade against pomp that doesn't sacrifice humor."—Publishers Weekly, starred review

★ "Completing a story penned by arguably America's greatest author is no easy feat, but the Caldecott-winning author-illustrator (and husband-wife) team proves more than equal to the task. . . . A pensive and whimsical work that Twain would applaud."—Kirkus, starred review

★ "The combination of Twain’s (often sarcastic) humor and “lessons of life,” a touch of allegory, and Stead’s own storytelling skills result in an awesome piece of fantasy."—School Library Journal, starred review

★ "Beautifully understated and nuanced illustrations by Erin Stead add the finishing flourishes to this remarkable work."—Shelf Awareness, starred review

“drawn with a graceful crosshatched intelligence that seems close to the best of Wyeth.”—Adam Gopnik, The New York Times

"Twain and the two Steads have created what could become a read-aloud classic, perfect for families to enjoy together."—The Horn Book

"Artful and meta and elegant”—The Wall Street Journal

"Should inspire readers young and old to seek further adventures with Twain."—The Washington Post

Mark Twain at the Buffalo Express: Articles and Sketches by America's Favorite Humorist

by Mark Twain, Joseph B. McCullough, Janice McIntire-Strasburg

In August 1869 Mark Twain acquired part ownership of the Buffalo Express. During the following eighteen months, he wrote some of his best short pieces, humorous sketches, rants, and commentaries. Mark Twain at the "Buffalo Express" collects these complete and unabridged writings for the first time.

Twain's writings for the Buffalo Express crackle with his trademark energy, wit, and insight, illuminating his literary and intellectual journey during a seldom-studied period in his life. From these articles Twain cultivated themes and characters that later appeared in his best-known works. Everyone who loves Mark Twain will love Mark Twain at the "Buffalo Express."

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn: Norman Rockwell Collector's Edition (Abbeville Illustrated Classics)

by Mark Twain

A great American novelist, illustrated by a great American artist―now available in a collectible two-volume set
In 1936, the Heritage Press, a publisher of fine editions, commissioned Norman Rockwell to illustrate Mark Twain’s Adventures of Tom Sawyer; four years later, they asked him to illustrate The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as well. For each book, Rockwell created eight full-color paintings and numerous pen-and-ink drawings, the product of extensive on-the-ground research in Twain’s hometown of Hannibal, Missouri. Famously, Rockwell even tried to buy some Hannibal residents’ old clothes, to dress his models in.
For years, the Rockwell editions of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn have been unavailable in stores. Now, Abbeville Press is proud to reissue them as a handsome new clothbound set. The color plates are reproduced from new photography of Rockwell’s original paintings, the typesetting has been done anew to a high standard, and new introductions―illustrated with Rockwell’s rarely seen preliminary sketches―examine this unique encounter between two legendary chroniclers of America.
Publisher’s note: These volumes present Mark Twain’s text unabridged and unedited, as it appeared in the original American editions of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885). Two clothbound volumes in slipcase

Tales of Wonder (Bison Frontiers of Imagination)

by Mark Twain, David Ketterer

Mark Twain's unsettling imagination and passionate curiosity roamed far and wide—racing across microscopic worlds and interstellar voids, leaping ahead to fearful futures, and speculating on dazzling inventions to come. Tales of Wonder features some of the most notable but little-known science fiction available, penned by the famed American humorist and writer. With characteristic wit and acuity, Twain embarks on an epic journey into a drop of water, catches a glimpse of an invisible man, reveals a generation-starship-type world in the heart of a drifting iceberg, and imagines futuristic devices of instantaneous communication such as the "phrenophone" and "telelectroscope."

Twain pioneered the use of time travel to the past in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. As for the future, he envisioned a radical utopia of absolute suffrage and future histories in which a global theocracy holds sway or a monarchy rules America. This entertaining and absorbing collection of tales reminds us that the former steamboat pilot dreamed about the stars, anticipated and dreaded the future, and above all was continually surprised and enchanted by the world around him.

Joan of Arc

by Mark Twain, Diane Stanley

Against the fascinating tapestry of Frances history during the Hundred Years' War, Diane Stanley unfolds the story of the simple thirteen-year-old village girl who in Just a few years would lead France to independence from English rule, and thus become a symbol of France's national pride. It is a story of vision and bravery, fierce determination, and tragic martyrdom.
Diane Stanley's extraordinary gift to present historical information in an accessible and child-friendly format has never been more impressive, nor her skillful, beautifully realized illustrations (here imitating medieval illuminated manuscripts) more exquisite.

Joan of Arc

by Mark Twain, Diane Stanley

Very few people know that Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) wrote a major work on Joan of Arc. Still fewer know that he considered it not only his most important but also his best work. He spent twelve years in research and many months in France doing archival work and then made several attempts until he felt he finally had the story he wanted to tell. He reached his conclusion about Joan's unique place in history only after studying in detail accounts written by both sides, the French and the English. Because of Mark Twain's antipathy to institutional religion, one might expect an anti-Catholic bias toward Joan or at least toward the bishops and theologians who condemned her. Instead one finds a remarkably accurate biography of the life and mission of Joan of Arc told by one of this country's greatest storytellers. The very fact that Mark Twain wrote this book and wrote it the way he did is a powerful testimony to the attractive power of the Catholic Church's saints. This is a book that really will inform and inspire.

The Best Short Stories of Mark Twain (Modern Library Classics)

by Mark Twain

This unique collection of Twain’s essential short stories and semiautobiographical narratives is a testament to the author’s vast imagination. Featuring popular tales such as “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog” and “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg,” as well as some delightful excerpts from The Diaries of Adam and Eve, this compilation also includes darker works written in the author’s twilight years. These selections illuminate the depth of Twain’s artistry, humor, irony, and narrative genius.

The Gilded Age (Modern Library Classics)

by Mark Twain, Charles Dudley Warner

Introduction by Ron Powers
Includes Newly Commissioned Endnotes

Arguably the first major American novel to satirize the political milieu of Washington, D.C. and the wild speculation schemes that exploded across the nation in the years that followed the Civil War, The Gilded Age gave this remarkable era its name. Co-written by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, this rollicking novel is rife with unscrupulous politicians, colorful plutocrats, and blindly optimistic speculators caught up in a frenzy of romance, murder, and surefire deals gone bust. First published in 1873 and filled with unforgettable characters such as the vainglorious Colonel Sellers and the ruthless Senator Dilsworthy, The Gilded Age is a hilarious and instructive lesson in American history.

Pudd'nhead Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins (Modern Library Classics)

by Mark Twain

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.

Mark Twain: Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, and Essays: Volume 2: 1891-1910 (Library of America)

by Mark Twain

This Library of America book, with its companion volume, is the most comprehensive collection ever published of Mark Twain’s short writings—the incomparable stories, sketches, burlesques, hoaxes, tall tales, speeches, satires, and maxims of America’s greatest humorist. Arranged chronologically and containing many pieces restored to the form in which Twain intended them to appear, the volumes show with unprecedented clarity the literary evolution of Mark Twain over six decades of his career.

This volume contains eighty pieces from the years 1891 to 1910, when Twain emerged from bankruptcy and personal tragedy to become the white-suited, cigar-smoking international celebrity who reported on his own follies and those of humanity with an unerring sense of the absurd. Some stories display Twain’s fascination with money and greed, such as “The Esquimau Maiden’s Romance” and “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg.” Other stories, written after the death of his daughter Susy in 1896, explore the outer limits of fantasy and psychic phenomena, including “Which Was the Dream?” “The Great Dark,” and “My Platonic Sweetheart.”

The United States military involvement in Cuba, China, and the Philippines turned Twain’s attention to political satire and invective. “To the Person Sitting in Darkness,” “The United States of Lyncherdom,” “The Czar’s Soliloquy,” and “The War Prayer” are biting denunciations of European and American imperialism. Other political issues inspired articles and stories about the Jews, the notorious Dreyfus case, and vivisection. Twain’s increasingly unorthodox religious opinions are powerfully, often comically, expressed in “Extracts from Adam’s Diary,” “Eve’s Diary,” “Eve Speaks,” “Adam’s Soliloquy,” “A Humane Word from Satan,” “What is Man?” “Extract from Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven,” and “Letters from the Earth.”

“Against the assault of laughter,” he said, “nothing can stand.” Twain’s brilliant inventiveness continues to shine in such later comic masterpieces as “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offences,” “Italian Without a Master,” “Hunting the Deceitful Turkey,” and “My First Lie and How I Got Out of It.” A posthumous collection of proverbs and aphorisms (“More Maxims of Mark”) is included as an appendix.

The publishing history of every story, sketch, and speech in this volume has been thoroughly researched, and in each instance the most authoritative text has been reproduced. This collection also includes an extensive chronology of Twain’s complex life, helpful notes on the people and events referred to in his works, and a guide to the texts.

LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

Mark Twain : Mississippi Writings : Tom Sawyer, Life on the Mississippi, Huckleberry Finn, Pudd'nhead Wilson (Library of America)

by Mark Twain

This Library of America collection presents Twain's best-known works, including Adventures of Hucklebery Finn, together in one volume for the first time.

Tom Sawyer “is simply a hymn,” said its author, “put into prose form to give it a worldly air,” a book where nostalgia is so strong that it dissolves the tensions and perplexities that assert themselves in the later works. Twain began Huckleberry Finn the same year Tom Sawyer was published, but he was unable to complete it for several more. It was during this period of uncertainty that Twain made a pilgrimage to the scenes of his childhood in Hannibal, Missouri, a trip that led eventually to Life on the Mississippi. The river in Twain’s descriptions is a bewitching mixture of beauty and power, seductive calms and treacherous shoals, pleasure and terror, an image of the societies it touches and transports.

Each of these works is filled with comic and melodramatic adventure, with horseplay and poetic evocations of scenery, and with characters who have become central to American mythology—not only Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, but also Roxy, the mulatto slave in Puddn’head Wilson, one of the most telling portraits of a woman in American fiction. With each book there is evidence of a growing bafflement and despair, until with Puddn’head Wilson, high jinks and games, far from disguising the terrible cost of slavery, become instead its macabre evidence.

Through each of four works, too, runs the Mississippi, the river that T. S. Eliot, echoing Twain, was to call the “strong brown god.” For Twain, the river represented the complex and often contradictory possibilities in his own and his nation’s life. The Mississippi marks the place where civilization, moving west with its comforts and proprieties, discovers and contends with the rough realities, violence, chicaneries, and promise of freedom on the frontier. It is the place, too, where the currents Mark Twain learned to navigate as a pilot—an experience recounted in Life on the Mississippi—move inexorably into the Deep South, so that the innocence of joyful play and boyhood along its shores eventually confronts the grim reality of slavery.

LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

Pudd'nhead Wilson (Vintage Classics)

by Mark Twain

Mark Twain’s darkest novel—about a master and slave switched at birth—combines a courtroom drama with a provocative fable about race and identity.

Twain’s plot is set in motion when a slave named Roxy exchanges her light-skinned son Chambers with her master’s baby, Tom. Roxy’s child, now known as Tom, grows up as a spoiled, privileged white man, who is horrified when Roxy tells him the truth. He nearly gets away with a vicious crime, but his downfall comes in the form of a clever, eccentric lawyer, nicknamed “Puddn’head” Wilson. Twain’s novel was the first to use fingerprinting to solve a crime, but its significance goes much further as an investigation into the nature of identity. When the two young men are forced to change places again, the former slave finds himself exiled to a white world where he will never feel at ease, while Roxy’s child discovers that his newfound value as human property outweighs his guilt as a murderer. Despite its ironic humor and the symmetrical neatness of its denouement, Pudd’nhead Wilson is a tragedy that refuses easy answers.

The Prince and the Pauper (Vintage Classics)

by Mark Twain

Mark Twain’s satiric novel about two boys who trade places in Tudor England—written “for young people of all ages”—was his first foray into historical fiction.

Set in 1547, The Prince and the Pauper brings together Tom Canty, an impoverished urchin who lives with his abusive father in London’s filthiest streets, and pampered Prince Edward, the son of King Henry VIII. Noticing their uncanny resemblance, the two boys trade clothes on a whim. While Tom lives in the lap of luxury and finds he has a knack for rendering wise judgments, the ragged Prince Edward roams the city and discovers firsthand the misery of his poorest subjects’ lives. But when the king dies and Edward tries to claim his throne, he finds that changing places will be difficult to undo. In this rollicking tale, Twain’s scathing indictment of injustice comes richly clothed in his trademark humor and wit.

Collected Nonfiction of Mark Twain, Volume 1: Selections from the Autobiography, Letters, Essays, and Speeches; Introduction by Adam Hochschild (Everyman's Library Classics Series)

by Mark Twain

The first of two hardcover volumes collecting the major nonfiction by the "father of American literature": more than 150 letters, essays, and speeches selected to showcase the dazzling range of his interests and passions. An Everyman's Library Original.

Whether crossing the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans or blazing through Europe and the Americas, Twain turned his trademark wit, candor, and acerbic sarcasm on all his experiences. We can trace his personal evolution through his ambition-filled missives home to Missouri after moving out West to be a fledgling reporter, his raucous stories of navigating a steamboat down the Mississippi, his romantic-turned-elegiac sentiments for his wife, Livy, and, later in life, his darker reflections on the ills of society. Often too outrageous not to be true, Twain’s real-life adventures added to his enduring legend, while his clear-eyed view of humanity has provided an unmatched blend of entertainment and moral integrity for generations of readers.

Collected Nonfiction of Mark Twain, Volume 2: Selections from the Memoirs and Travel Writings; Introduction by Richard Russo (Everyman's Library Classics Series)

by Mark Twain

The second of two hardcover volumes collecting the major nonfiction by the "father of American literature," including excerpts from The Innocents Abroad, Roughing It, A Tramp Abroad, and Life on the Mississippi.

Twain’s playful exuberance and remarkable storytelling gifts are on full display as he regales readers with real-life adventures in these rollicking, shrewd, and hilarious autobiographical works. In these pages, we follow him through his stint as a fledgling reporter out West to his attempt to navigate a steamboat on the Mississippi River, and all during his experiences as an irreverent and skeptical traveler through Europe and the Holy Land. Gleefully iconoclastic, whether he is puncturing the pretensions of others or aiming his satirical barbs squarely at himself, Twain also proves to be deeply compassionate, as fierce in his condemnation of injustice as he is skillful in mining the humor in human folly. Long hailed as “the Lincoln of our literature,” Twain harbored as rich and fertile a blend of contradictions as the dynamic nation he came to embody—and define.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (MARK TWAIN)

by Mark Twain

Following Sterlings spectacularly successful launch of its childrens classic novels (240,000 books in print to date),comes a dazzling new series: Classic Starts. The stories are abridged; the quality is complete. Classic Starts treats the worlds beloved tales (and children) with the respect they deserve--all at an incomparable price.

"Tom Sawyer liked adventures, which means he was always getting in trouble." Searching for treasure, witnessing a murder, getting caught in a bat cave, tricking others into doing his work, running away with Huckleberry Finn--Tom Sawyers antics and mischief-making are sheer, child-pleasing delight. Every boy and girl should experience the joy and fun of this classic tale.

On the Decay of the Art of Lying (American Roots)

by Mark Twain

In 1880, the great American author and humorist Mark Twain wrote his essay "On the Decay of the Art of Lying" for a Historical and Antiquarian Club meeting in Hartford, Connecticut. Twain's humorous and satirical voice is in full flower, as he discusses the universal pastime of lying, and suggests that judicious lying should be encouraged and cultivated - as long as one strives "…to lie with a good object, and not an evil one; to lie for others' advantage, and not our own; to lie healingly, charitably, humanely, not cruelly, hurtfully, maliciously…" This short work is part of Applewood's "American Roots" series, tactile mementos of American passions by some of America's most famous writers and thinkers.

Love Letters Of Great Men - Vol. 1

by Mark Twain, Victor Hugo, Vincent Van Gogh, John Keats, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Winston Churchill, Lord Byron, Ludwig van Beethoven, Napoleon Bonaparte, Theodore Roosevelt Jr.

LOVE LETTERS OF GREAT MEN (Volume 1) is an anthology of romantic love letters written by leading male historical figures. *** The book plays a key role in the plot of the US movie Sex and the City. *** When Carrie Bradshaw in the "Sex and the City" movie began reading the book Love Letters of Great Men, millions of women wanted to get their hands on the book. Of course, what could be more romantic than an entire book of love letters, written by men! *** The book includes love letters written by Ludwig van Beethoven, Pietro Bembo, Napolean Bonaparte, Rupert Brooke, Robert Browning, Robert Burdette, Lord Byron, Lord Randolph Churchill, Winston Churchill, Mark Twain, John Constable, Cuff Cooper, Oliver Cromwell, Pierre Curie, Alfred de Musset, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gustave Flaubert, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Lyman Hodge, Count Gabriel Honore de Mirbeau, Victor Hugo, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, John Keats, Henry IV of France, Henry VIII, Franz Liszt, Jack London, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Thomas Otway, Robert Peary, Sir Walter Raleigh, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., John Ruskin, Robert Schumann, George Bernard Shaw, Richard Steele, Alfred de Musset, Dylan Thomas, Count Leo Tolstoy, Vincent Van Gogh, Voltaire, Henry von Kleist, and Woodrow Wilson.

All-Action Classics: Tom Sawyer (Volume 4)

by Mark Twain, Ben Caldwell

An exciting approach to the classics: vibrant, appealing graphic novels that bring beloved stories to a new generation of kids.

With its lively, fun narrative and irrepressible hero, Tom Sawyer is tailor-made for the graphic novel form. Just imagine such classic moments as Tom and Becky in the bat-filled cave or the hilarious fence-painting incident captured in bright and atmospheric images. The stunning art endows each character with personality and each scene with movement and energy. Every frame is filled with such breathtaking detail—from the buildings to the carefully created backgrounds—that readers will feel as if they could step right into Twain’s wonderful world.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Graphic Revolve: Common Core Editions)

by Mark Twain

By witnessing a murder, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn find themselves in a series of adventures that lead them to some frightening situations. Written in graphic-novel format. These reader-favorite tiles are now updated for enhanced Common Core State Standards support, including discussion and writing prompts developed by a Common Core expert, an expanded introduction, bolded glossary words and dynamic new covers.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Calico Illustrated Classics)

by Mark Twain, Lisa Mullarkey

In Mark Twain's classic tale of friendship and adventure, Tom Sawyer is the trouble-making leader of the boys in a small town in Missouri. Tom uses his wit to talk his friends into all kinds of adventures, including witnessing a murder, pretending to be pirates, and finding treasure! Even school is an adventure with Tom in the Calico Illustrated Classics adaptation of Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Calico Chapter Books is an imprint of Magic Wagon, a division of ABDO Group. Grades 3-8.

King Leopolds Soliloquy: The University of New Orleans Press Edition

by Mark Twain

In Mark Twain's satire, a raving King Leopold of Belgium launches an impassioned defense of his gruesome policies in Africa, claiming his divine right to brutalize the Congolese people. A scathing condemnation of imperialism and the violence that it incites, Twain's words retain all of their vitriol over a century later. For years this remarkable work, which lead the first international campaign for human rights, has only been reproduced in low-quality facsimile. Using the original 1905 release, The University of New Orleans Press has restored the manuscript with new typesetting and archival photographs. In a new introduction, Dr. Hunt Hawkins provides crucial insight into Twain's mindset as he pushes for social reform. Although Twain likely never knew the impact of his campaign, King Leopold's Soliloquy remains a hallmark of anti-imperialist rhetoric and a testament to the power of Twain's words.

The Big Book of Graphic Classics: Five Graphic Novel Adaptations of Classic Stories (Graphic Revolve: Common Core Editions)

by Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jules Verne, Aaron Shepard, Carl Bowen, Pat Perrin, Wim Coleman, M C Hall, Anne L Watson

The world's best stories, retold in dynamic graphic novel form. These reinvisioned classics will hook reluctant readers and thrust them face to face with some of history's most famous tales. Stories included: Robin Hood, Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island.

Mark Twain's War Prayer

by Mark Twain

Mark Twain’s lambasting of phony, war-mongering patriotism reinterpreted by one of our finest contemporary illustrators. Written in 1910 in his 70th year, Mark Twain, having lived through 14 wars waged just by his own country on others, declined to publish this poetic despairing reproof against patriotism. His regular illustrator Daniel Beard even urged Twain to issue the piece, to which the author replied, "No, I have told the whole truth in that, and only dead men can tell the truth in this world. It can be published after I am dead."
It took 13 years after his passing for that prophecy to be fulfilled ― and now, another 102 years later, the legendary illustrator and graphic designer Seymour Chwast (himself 92 years young) has fulfilled Beard’s dream of enriching the fable with illustration.
Chwast brings every aspect of his skills to this interpretation: drawing, design, typography, type design, pastel painting and computer color all sit alongside each other with Twain’s text in pages that expand and pace the original. With another century and a quarter of warfare passed since its writing, Chwast’s artwork echoes advances in technology but Twain’s message about the pointlessness of patriotism as a marketing hook for death is only more pointed today. Color and Black-and-white illustrations

The Prince and the Pauper: The Graphic Novel (Campfire Graphic Novels)

by Mark Twain

A chance meeting between a member of the royal family and a street urchin triggers a course of events that form the basis of this enthralling story.

Tom, the pauper; and Edward, the prince, discover that not only do they share the same birthday, but they also look identical. Being the boys that they are, they decide to have some fun and exchange clothes. However, little do they know that this will land them up in the most bizarre of situations.

Inadvertently, the boys end up swapping places with each other - Tom becomes the prince; and Edward, the pauper. No one believes them when they try to explain their true identities, so they are forced to adapt to their new lifestyles, with very interesting consequences.

This well-loved novel by Mark Twain takes a humorous look at 16th century society, and the inequalities that existed at that time, and perhaps still do today.

The Prince and the Pauper, Mark Twain Classic Novel, (16th Century London, Children's Literature), Ribbon Page Marker, Perfect for Gifting

by Mark Twain, Paper Mill Press

This edition of Mark Twain's classic novel features a suede-like custom cover with beautiful metallic foiling and a ribbon marker.
A delightful story filled with wit and humor that presents a multidimensional view of social inequality during sixteenth century London. Follow the lives of two boys born on the same day but in completely different social circumstances. The story takes a satirical twist when the boys meet during a chance encounter. Envious of each other's life and seemingly identical in appearance, the boys exchange clothes and swap roles only to discover a series of unexpected hardships. Today, The Prince and the Pauper remains a treasured work of children's literature enjoyed by readers of all ages.

The Prince and the Pauper (Hesperus Minor Classics)

by Mark Twain

Two boys from two different walks of life change places and alter their paths forever in this American classic from Mark Twain
London, 1547. Two boys meet by chance and strike up a conversation at the gates of a palace. Tom Canty is a poor young boy with few prospects in life; his new friend happens to be Prince Edward VI, the Prince of Wales. The prince and the pauper could not be more different from one another, except for the small fact that they look identical. When Tom admires the prince's fine garments, he and Prince Edward decide on the spur of the moment to swap clothes. But with cruel irony the prince is mistaken for a poor beggar in Tom's rags and kicked out of his own palace while Tom is taken to be the prince by everyone he meets. Suddenly the prince and the pauper have swapped not only clothes but also their homes, families, lives, and their very identities. While the boys are eager to learn about life in someone else's shoes, they ultimately want to return to their own homes and families. But this proves to be a tall order when nobody believes the prince's claims that he is really a prince despite being clothed in rags. This gripping tale of mistaken identity sees Mark Twain venturing into historical fiction for children while displaying his typical flair for witty dialogue and incisive satire.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: The Graphic Novel (Campfire Graphic Novels)

by Mark Twain

Running away seemed like a good idea at the time...

The Widow Douglas is doing her best to civilise Huckleberry Finn, but it just isn't working. Wearing clean clothes, going to school, and having a hot meal waiting for him when he gets home are becoming boring and tedious.

So, to make his life more interesting Huck, as he is normally called, decides to join Tom Sawyer's gang of outlaws. However, when they fail to be the vicious ransom specialists they claim to be, Huck decides to forget about excitement and tries to give his civilised life another go. He attends school and minds his own business... for a while.

After his father turns up out of the blue and starts causing trouble, Huck decides he's had enough of normal life and sets sail on his raft for a secluded island. When he arrives he finds he's not the only one who has decided to live there. On the island, he encounters thieves, a flood that provides a nice surprise, con men, violent shootouts, family feuds and much more.

After so much adventure, Huckleberry Finn ends up wishing he was back at home, tucked up in bed after a hot meal. But does this wish come true, or do his adventures continue?

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain Classic (Essential Reading, Adventure, Huck Finn, Required Literature), Ribbon Page Marker, Perfect for Gifting

by Mark Twain, Paper Mill Press

This edition of Mark Twain's classic novel features a suede-like custom cover with beautiful metallic foiling and a ribbon marker. The perfect gift.
Relive the joys of childhood in this timeless classic filled with mischief and adventure. Extending from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, readers become captivated by a more in-depth understanding of their beloved character Huck Finn. With memorable characters and colorfully descriptive text, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remains a time-honored classic among children and adults.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Mark Twain Classic (Essential Reading, Adventure, Required Literature) Ribbon Page Marker, Perfect for Gifting

by Mark Twain, Paper Mill Press

This edition of Mark Twain's classic novel features a suede-like custom cover with beautiful metallic foiling and a ribbon marker. The perfect gift.
Relive the joys of childhood in this timeless classic filled with mischief and adventure. The story follows a young boy growing up along the Mississippi River living a life full of wonder and possibility. With memorable characters and colorfully descriptive text, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer remains a time-honored classic among children and adults.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Chiltern Classic)

by Mark Twain

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The Prince and The Pauper (Chiltern Classic)

by Mark Twain

Chiltern Publishing was formed in 2018 with a vision to create the most beautiful classics. Using a perfect mix of tradition and the very latest in printing techniques, 19th Century quality has met 21st Century technology. With wonderfully detailed covers, sparkling gilt edges, creamy pages, and stitched binding they are the most beautiful classics ever published.

The Prince and the Pauper is a novel by American author Mark Twain. The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain tells the story of Edward Tudor, Prince of Wales and King Henry VIII's son and heir to his throne. He and a pauper named Tom Canty switch clothing, and everyone mistakes one of them for the other because of their identical looks, laughing at Edward's claims of being a prince. The moral lesson of "The Prince and the Pauper" by Mark Twain is that true nobility comes from within, and not from one's social status or wealth. The story teaches us that people should not be judged based on their external appearance, but rather on their character, actions, and values.

Mark Twain: The Gilded Age and Later Novels: The Gilded Age / The American Claimant / Tom Sawyer Abroad / Tom Sawyer, Detective / No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger (Library of America)

by Mark Twain

"Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand," Mark Twain once wrote. In this sixth volume in The Library of America's authoritative collection of his writings-the final volume of his fiction-America's greatest humorist emerges in a surprising range of roles: as the savvy satirist of The Gilded Age, the brilliant plotter of its inventive sequel, The American Claimant, and, in two Tom Sawyer novels, as the acknowledged master revisiting his best-loved characters. Also in this volume is the authoritative version of Twain's haunting last novel, No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger, left unpublished when he died.

The Gilded Age (1873), a collaboration with Hartford neighbor Charles Dudley Warner, sends up an age when vast fortunes piled up amid thriving corruption and a city Twain knew well, Washington, D.C., full of would-be power brokers and humbug. The novel also gives us one of Twain's most enduring characters, Colonel Sellers, who returns in The American Claimant (1892), an encore performance that moves beyond the worldly satire of its predecessor into realms of sheer inventive mayhem.

Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894) and Tom Sawyer, Detective (1896) extend the adventures of Huck and Tom. No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger (1908), an astonishing psychic adventure set in the gothic gloom of a medieval Austrian village, offers a powerful and uncanny exploration of the powers of the human mind.

LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

Huckleberry Finn

by Mark Twain

Chiltern Publishing creates the most beautiful editions of the World’s finest literature. Your favorite classic titles in a way you have never seen them before; the tactile layers, fine details and beautiful colors of these remarkable covers make these titles feel extra special and will look striking on any shelf.
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is one of Mark Twain's best-known and most important novels. The novel tells the story of Huckleberry Finn's escape from his alcoholic and abusive father and Huck's adventurous journey down the Mississippi River together with the runaway slave Jim. Huck desires to break free from the constraints of society, both physical and mental, while Jim is fleeing a life of literal enslavement.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Clydesdale Classics)

by Mark Twain

Packaged in handsome, affordable trade editions, Clydesdale Classics is a new series of essential literary works. The series features literary phenomena with influence and themes so great that, after their publication, they changed literature forever. From the musings of literary geniuses such as Nathaniel Hawthorne in The Scarlet Letter, to the striking personal narratives from Harriet Jacobs in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, this new series is a comprehensive collection of our history through the words of an exceptional few.

Ernest Hemingway once said: “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.” Often referred to as “the great American novel,” The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn defined American literature with its richness of characters, colorful vernacular, and vibrant depictions of the American Midwest. Told in the first-person from the viewpoint of the classic protagonist, the satirical narrative follows young “Huck” Finn as he searches for escape and adventure along the Mississippi River.

The story begins where Twain’s previous novel, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, left off: Huck and his friend Tom Sawyer come into a large sum of money, and Huck is adopted by a middle-class widow who attempts to civilize him. Accustomed to a poor, destitute existence and vagabonding with his abusive alcoholic father, Huck quickly becomes dissatisfied with the confines and rigidity of his new life. When his father returns and begins to harass him for money, Huck is kidnapped and taken to his father’s cabin, where he longs to escape. After faking his own death, Huck escapes to Jackson’s Island where he meets a slave named Jim, who is also running away. Together, they travel on a raft up the Mississippi River in search of freedom.

An absolute, uncontested classic, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is one of the greatest coming-of-age adventure tales of our time.

Mark Twain: Five Novels (Leather-bound Classics)

by Mark Twain

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James : A Novel

by Percival Everett, Mark Twain

From Percival Everett-a Recipient Of The Nbcc Lifetime Achievement Award And Finalist For The Pulitzer Prize, Booker Prize, And Numerous Pen Awards-comes James, A Retelling Of The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn, Both Harrowing And Ferociously Funny, Told From The Enslaved Jim's Point Of View. When The Enslaved Jim Overhears That He Is About To Be Sold To A Man In New Orleans, Separated From His Wife And Daughter Forever, He Decides To Hide On Nearby Jackson Island Until He Can Formulate A Plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn Has Faked His Own Death To Escape His Violent Father, Recently Returned To Town. As All Readers Of American Literature Know, Thus Begins The Dangerous And Transcendent Journey By Raft Down The Mississippi River Toward The Elusive And Too-often-unreliable Promise Of The Free States And Beyond. While Many Narrative Set Pieces Of The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn Remain In Place (floods And Storms, Stumbling Across Both Unexpected Death And Unexpected Treasure In The Myriad Stopping Points Along The River's Banks, Encountering The Scam Artists Posing As The Duke And Dauphin...), Jim's Agency, Intelligence And Compassion Are Shown In A Radically New Light. Brimming With The Electrifying Humor And Lacerating Observations That Have Made Everett A Cult Literary Icon (oprah Daily), And One Of The Most Decorated Writers Of Our Lifetime, James Is Destined To Be A Major Publishing Event And A Cornerstone Of Twenty-first Century American Literature-- Provided By Publisher.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

by Mark Twain

The classic tale of a young boy’s adventures on the Mississippi in the nineteenth century.

Mark Twain’s classic The Adventures of Tom Sawyer has been enjoyed by generations of readers across the world since its publication in 1876. With its humorous glimpses into life in nineteenth-century, small-town America, this novel has provided unique social commentary that continues to be discussed in classrooms today. Tom Sawyer, a mischievous boy growing up in the fictional town of St. Petersburg, Missouri, is constantly getting in and out of trouble with his friend Huckleberry Finn. Based on Twain’s own childhood, this novel not only gives profound insights into American life but also shows how children can develop moral codes based on friendship, loyalty, and respect.
 

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

by Mark Twain

'Tom was a glittering hero once more - the pet of the old, and the envy of the young...There were some that believed he would be President yet, if he escaped hanging.' In this enduring and internationally popular novel, Mark ogaincombines social satire and dime-novel sensation with a rhapsody on boyhood and on America's pre-industrial past. Tom Sawyer is resilient, enterprising, and vainglorious. In a series of adventures along the banks of the Mississippi, he usually manages to come out on top. From petty triumphs over his friends and over his long-suffering Aunt Polly, to his intervention in a murder trial, Tom engages readers of all ages. He has long been a defining figure in the American cultural imagination. Alongside the charm and the excitement, Twain raises serious questions about community, race, and the past. Above all, the book invites discussion of the way in which childhood is invoked to counter the uncomfortable truths of the adult world. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

by Mark Twain

Mark Twain's adventurous story of boyhood is now available in an unabridged paperback edition for today's young readers.

Whether he's tricking others into doing his work or running away with Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer always manages to wiggle his way out of trouble. But when he accidentally witnesses a murder, Tom is suddenly faced with trouble that's well beyond fun mischief-making.



Mark Twain's story of boyhood and childhood antics is now available in an unabridged paperback edition perfect for young readers' libraries.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

by Mark Twain

Mark Twain's adventurous story of boyhood is now available in an unabridged, illustrated, cloth hardcover volume in Union Square and Co.'s Signature Clothbound Editions series.



Whether he's tricking others into doing his work or running away with Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer always manages to wiggle his way out of trouble. But when he accidentally witnesses a murder, Tom is suddenly faced with trouble that's well beyond fun mischief-making.  

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

by Mark Twain

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:

New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars
Biographies of the authors
Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events
Footnotes and endnotes
Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work
Comments by other famous authors
Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations
Bibliographies for further reading
Indices & Glossaries, when appropriate

All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences--biographical, historical, and literary--to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

Perhaps the best-loved nineteenth-century American novel, Mark Twain's tale of boyhood adventure overflows with comedy, warmth, and slapstick energy. It brings to life and array of irresistible characters--the awesomely self-confident Tom, his best buddy Huck Finn, indulgent Aunt Polly, and the lovely, beguiling Becky--as well as such unforgettable incidents as whitewashing a fence, swearing an oath in blood, and getting lost in a dark and labyrinthine cave. Below Tom Sawyer's sunny surface lurk hints of a darker reality, of youthful innocence and na vet confronting the cruelty, hypocrisy, and foolishness of the adult world--a theme that would become more pronounced in Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Despite such suggestions, Tom Sawyer remains Twain's joyful ode to the endless possibilities of childhood.

H. Daniel Peck is John Guy Vassar Professor of English at Vassar College and is the author of Thoreau's Morning Work and A World by Itself: The Pastoral Moment in Cooper's Fiction.

Mark Twain Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches & Essays 1852-1890

by Mark Twain

The most comprehensive Mark Twain collection—over 150 short stories, sketches, burlesques, hoaxes, tall tales, speeches, satires, and maxims from America’s greatest humorist.

Arranged chronologically and containing many pieces restored to the form in which Twain intended them to appear, this special Library of America volume shows with unprecedented clarity the literary evolution of Mark Twain over six decades of his career.

The nearly two hundred separate items in this volume cover Twain's writings from the years 1852 to 1890. As a riverboat pilot, Confederate irregular, silver miner, frontier journalist, and publisher, Twain witnessed the tragicomic beginning of the Civil War in Missouri, the frenzied opening of the West, and the feverish corruption, avarice, and ambition of the Reconstruction era. He wrote about political bosses, jumping frogs, robber barons, cats, women's suffrage, temperance, petrified men, the bicycle, the Franco-Prussian War, the telephone, the income tax, the insanity defense, injudicious swearing, and the advisability of political candidates preemptively telling the worst about themselves before others get around to it.

Among the stories included here are “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog,” which won him instant fame when published in 1865, “Cannibalism in the Cars,” “The Invalid's Story,” and the charming “A Cat's Tale,” written for his daughters’ private amusement. This volume also presents several of his famous and successful speeches and toasts, such as “Woman — God Bless Her,” “The Babies,” and “Advice to Youth.” Such writings brought Twain immense success on the public lecture and banquet circuit, as did his controversial “Whittier Birthday Speech,” which portrayed Boston's most revered men of letters as a band of desperadoes.

LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

Autobiographical Writings

by Mark Twain

An intimate look at Mark Twain that only he himself could offer, edited by highly respected Twain scholar R. Kent Rasmussen

A must-have for all lovers of Mark Twain, this selection of his autobiographical writings opens a rare window onto the writer’s life, particularly his early years. Born on November 30, 1835, in Florida, Missouri, Samuel Langhorne Clemens first used the pseudonym Mark Twain while a journalist in Nevada in 1863. When his first major book, The Innocents Abroad, appeared six years later, he began what would become one of the most celebrated and influential careers in American letters. Autobiographical Writings will help readers know the author intimately and appreciate why, a century after his death, he remains so vital and appealing.

For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Tales, Speeches, Essays, and Sketches

by Mark Twain

These short fiction and prose pieces display the variety of Twain's imaginative invention, his diverse talents, and his extraordinary emotional range. Twain was a master of virtually every prose genre; in fables and stories, speeches and essays, he skilfully adapted, extended or satirized literary conventions, guided only by his unruly imagination. From the comic wit that sparkles in maxims from 'Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar,' to the parodic perfection of 'An Awful - Terrible Medieval Romance,' to the satirical delights of The Innocents Abroad and Roughing It; from the warm nostalgia of 'Early Days' to the bitter, brooding tone of 'The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg' to the anti-imperial vehemence of 'To the Person Sitting in the Darkness' and the poignant grief expressed in 'Death of Jean', Twain emerges in this volume in many guises, all touched by genius.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

puddnhead-wilson-and-those-extraordinary-twins

by Mark Twain

Pudd’nhead Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins contain Twain’s most overt treatment of the moral and societal implications of slavery in America. This Norton Critical Edition remains the only edition available that is based on completely re-edited texts, accounting for all versions that Twain might have written or influenced. All substantive variants in the two separate "first editions," one printed in Britain and the other in the United States, have been reconciled in this collated edition, with all rejected variants tabulated. Dozens of additional illustrations accompany the text, and all textual variants, accepted or rejected, are included.

"Criticism" includes twenty-three reviews and interpretive essays, eight of them new to the Second Edition, including those by Andrew Jay Hoffman, Myra Jehlen, and John Carlos Rowe.

A Selected Bibliography is also included.

No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger (Mark Twain Library)

by Mark Twain, William M. Gibson, Richard A. Watson, Victor Fischer

Mark Twain's fantastical last novel took him twelve years--and three long drafts—to complete. Based on boyhood memories of the Mississippi River Valley and of the print shops of Hannibal, the story is set in medieval Austria at the dawn of the printing craft. It is a psychic adventure, full of phantasmagoric effects, in which a penniless printer's apprentice—a youthful, mysterious stranger with the curious name 44—gradually reveals his otherworldly powers and the hidden possibilities of the mind. Ending on a startling note, this surprisingly existential novel reveals a darker side to the author's genius.

This long-overlooked work appears here as Mark Twain intended it and replaces the bogus 1916 edition published by Albert Bigelow Paine, which relied on the first, instead of the final, draft, deleted one-fourth of the words, added a character, and misrepresented the ending. In addition, for the first time in the Mark Twain Library edition, a glossary of printer's terms is featured along with expert notes and commentary.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

by Mark Twain

Mark Twain's witty, satirical tale of childhood rebellion against hypocritical adult authority, the Penguin Classics edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is edited with a critical introduction by Peter Coveney. Mark Twain's story of a boy's journey down the Mississippi on a raft conveyed the voice and experience of the American frontier as no other work had done before. When Huck escapes from his drunken, abusive 'Pap' and the 'sivilizing' Widow Douglas with runaway slave Jim, he embarks on a series of adventures that draw him to feuding families and the trickery of the unscrupulous 'Duke' and 'Dauphin'. Beneath the exploits, however, are more serious undercurrents - of slavery, adult control and, above all, of Huck's struggle between his instinctive goodness and the corrupt values of society which threaten his deep and enduring friendship with Jim. Based on the first edition of 1884, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn includes a chronology and list of further reading by Richard Maxwell. Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910) trained as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi river; 'Mark Twain', a phrase used on riverboats to indicate that the water is two fathoms deep, became the pseudonym by which he was best known. After the Civil War, Twain turned to journalism, publishing his first short story in 1865. Dubbed 'the father of American literature' by William Faulkner, Twain led a colourful life of travelling, bankruptcy and great literary success. If you enjoyed The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, you may like Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, also available in Penguin Classics. 'All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn ... There has been nothing as good since' Ernest Hemingway 'Huckleberry Finn, like other great works of imagination, can give to every reader whatever he is capable of taking from it' T.S. Eliot

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

by Mark Twain

Mark Twain's classic story of one boy's adventure down the river

Huckleberry Finn had a tough life with his drunk father until an adventure with Tom Sawyer changed everything. But when Huck's dad returns and kidnaps him, he must escpe down the Mississippi river with runaway slave, Jim. They encounter trouble at every turn, from floods and gunfights to armed bandits and the long arm of the law. Through it all the friends stick together - but can Huck and Tom free Jim from slavery once and for all?

Pudd’nhead Wilson (The John Harvard Library)

by Mark Twain

When a murder takes place in Dawson’s Landing, Missouri, the lives of twin Italian noblemen, the courageous slave Roxy, her 1/32nd “black” son who has been raised “white,” and a failing lawyer with an intense interest in the science of fingerprinting become tangled. The unsolved riddle at the heart of Pudd’nhead Wilson is less the identity of the murderer than it is the question of whether nature or nurture makes the man.

In his introduction, Werner Sollors illuminates the complex web of uncertainty that is the switched-and-doubled-identity world of Mark Twain’s novel. This edition follows the text of the 1899 De Luxe edition and for the first time reprints all the E. W. Kemble illustrations that accompanied it.

Since 1959 The John Harvard Library has been instrumental in publishing essential American writings in authoritative editions.

The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County & Other Stories

by Mark Twain

“The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” is one of the most beloved of Mark Twain's tales. Notable for the shaggy-dog quality of the story-within-the-story, this early work of humorous short prose was Twain's first big success as a writer.

Seeking someone named Smiley, a man comes to a mining camp and meets a fellow who tells him of another Smiley, an inveterate betting man. One day, this Smiley caught a frog and trained it to out-jump any other frog; but when a stranger appeared at the camp, Smiley's famed gambling skills were tested severely …

This volume also includes two other Twain gems: “The Million-Pound Bank Note”, in which a down-and-out American in London is challenged by two rich men to survive with only a rare million-pound bill to his name; and “Luck”, which tells of both a great hero of the Crimean War and the only man who knows how he attained such a status.

Twain at Sea: The Maritime Writings of Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Seafaring America)

by Mark Twain

Samuel Clemens (1835–1910) repeatedly traversed the ocean during his globetrotting life. A keen observer, the man who recast himself as Mark Twain was fascinated by seafaring. This book compiles selections ranging from his first voyage in 1866―San Francisco to Hawaii―to his circumnavigation of the world by steamship 1897. Despite his background as a “brown water” mariner, Twain was out of his element on the ocean. His writings about being at sea (as well as feeling at sea) reflect both a growing familiarity with voyaging and an enduring sense of amazement. Twain’s shipboard observations capture his interest and amusement in the “blue water” mariners he encountered, with their salty subculture and individual quirks. Twain at Sea collects the author’s essays and travelogues on the maritime world in one volume, including excerpts from Roughing It, The Innocents Abroad, A Tramp Abroad, Following the Equator, and other sources.

The Awful German Language

by Mark Twain

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 - April 21, 1910), better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. He wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), the latter often called "The Great American Novel". Twain grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, which provided the setting for Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. After an apprenticeship with a printer, he worked as a typesetter and contributed articles to the newspaper of his older brother, Orion Clemens. He later became a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River before heading west to join Orion in Nevada. He referred humorously to his singular lack of success at mining, turning to journalism for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise. In 1865, his humorous story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", was published, based on a story he heard at Angels Hotel in Angels Camp, California, where he had spent some time as a miner. The short story brought international attention, and was even translated into classic Greek. His wit and satire, in prose and in speech, earned praise from critics and peers, and he was a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists, and European royalty. Though Twain earned a great deal of money from his writings and lectures, he invested in ventures that lost a great deal of money, notably the Paige Compositor, a mechanical typesetter, which failed because of its complexity and imprecision. In the wake of these financial setbacks, he filed for protection from his creditors via bankruptcy, and with the help of Henry Huttleston Rogers eventually overcame his financial troubles. Twain chose to pay all his pre-bankruptcy creditors in full, though he had no legal responsibility to do so.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Oxford Children's Classics)

by Mark Twain

Meet the boy who can find trouble without even looking. At school, at home, in church, and outdoors, if there's mischief about Tom Sawyer will be in the thick of it! In addition to his everyday stunts and trying to impress the adored Becky Thatcher, Tom experiences a dramatic turn of events when he witnesses a murder, runs away, and returns to attend his own funeral and testify in court. A classic children's tale and one of the Common Core State Standards Initiative's selections of recommended texts.

About the Series: Oxford Children's Classics presents original and unabridged stories that both children and parents love in beautifully designed editions. Included with each story are bonus materials, including reviews and reading recommendations, fun author profiles, quizzes, and more! Embark on a whole new world of adventure with the classics.

A Family Sketch and Other Private Writings (Volume 5) (Jumping Frogs: Undiscovered, Rediscovered, and Celebrated Writings of Mark Twain)

by Mark Twain, Livy Clemens, Susy Clemens

This book publishes, for the first time in full, the two most revealing of Mark Twain’s private writings. Here he turns his mind to the daily life he shared with his wife Livy, their three daughters, a great many servants, and an imposing array of pets. These first-hand accounts display this gifted and loving family in the period of its flourishing.

Mark Twain began to write “A Family Sketch” in response to the early death of his eldest daughter, Susy, but the manuscript grew under his hands to become an exuberant account of the entire household. His record of the childrens’ sayings―“Small Foolishnesses”―is next, followed by the related manuscript “At the Farm.” Also included are selections from Livy’s 1885 diary and an authoritative edition of Susy’s biography of her father, written when she was a teenager. Newly edited from the original manuscripts, this anthology is a unique record of a fascinating family.

Is He Dead? A Comedy in Three Acts

by Mark Twain

The University of California Press is delighted to announce the new publication of this three-act play by one of America's most important and well-loved writers. A highly entertaining comedy that has never appeared in print or on stage, Is He Dead? is finally available to the wide audience Mark Twain wished it to reach. Written in 1898 in Vienna as Twain emerged from one of the deepest depressions of his life, the play shows its author's superb gift for humor operating at its most energetic. The text of Is He Dead?, based on the manuscript in the Mark Twain Papers, appears here together with an illuminating essay by renowned Mark Twain scholar Shelley Fisher Fishkin and with Barry Moser's original woodcut illustrations in a volume that will surely become a treasured addition to the Mark Twain legacy.

Richly intermingling elements of burlesque, farce, and social satire with a wry look at the world market in art, Is He Dead? centers on a group of poor artists in Barbizon, France, who stage the death of a friend to drive up the price of his paintings. In order to make this scheme succeed, the artists hatch some hilarious plots involving cross-dressing, a full-scale fake funeral, lovers' deceptions, and much more.

Mark Twain was fascinated by the theater and made many attempts at playwriting, but this play is certainly his best. Is He Dead? may have been too "out there" for the Victorian 1890s, but today's readers will thoroughly enjoy Mark Twain's well-crafted dialogue, intriguing cast of characters, and above all, his characteristic ebullience and humor. In Shelley Fisher Fishkin's estimation, it is "a champagne cocktail of a play--not too dry, not too sweet, with just the right amount of bubbles and buzz."

Life on the Mississippi (Modern Library Classics)

by Mark Twain

Fashioned from the same experiences that would inspire the masterpiece Huckleberry Finn, Life on the Mississippi is Mark Twain’s most brilliant and most personal nonfiction work. It is at once an affectionate evocation of the vital river life in the steamboat era and a melancholy reminiscence of its passing after the Civil War, a priceless collection of humorous anecdotes and folktales, and a unique glimpse into Twain’s life before he began to write.

Written in a prose style that has been hailed as among the greatest in English literature, Life on the Mississippi established Twain as not only the most popular humorist of his time but also America’s most profound chronicler of the human comedy.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Penguin Classics)

by Mark Twain

"All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Hucklberry Finn." (Ernest Heminway)

Of all the contenders for the title of The Great American Novel, none has a better claim than The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Intended at first as a simple story of a boy's adventures in the Mississippi Valley—a sequel to Tom Sawyer—the book grew and matured under Twain's hand into a work of immeasurable richness and complexity. More than a century after its publication, the critical debate over the symbolic significance of Huck's and Jim's voyage is still fresh, and it remains a major work that can be enjoyed at many levels: as an incomparable adventure story and as a classic of American humor. This Penguin Classics edition features an introduction by John Seelye, author of The True Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and explanatory notes by Guy Cardwell.
For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The Autobiography of Mark Twain: Deluxe Modern Classic (Harper Perennial Deluxe Editions)

by Mark Twain

“A book filled with richness of humor and tragedy of disappointment and triumph, of sweetness and bitterness, and all in that unsurpassed American prose.”—New York Herald Tribune Book Review
Mark Twain was a figure larger than life: massive in talent, eruptive in temperament, unpredictable in his actions. He crafted stories of heroism, adventure, tragedy, and comedy that reflected the changing America of the time, and he tells his own story with the same flair he brought to his fiction. Writing this autobiography on his deathbed, Twain vowed to be “free and frank and unembarrassed” in the recounting of his life and his experiences.
With an introduction by noted scholar Charles Neider, and featuring sixteen pages of photographs, this edition was the first to arrange Twain's autobiographical writings in chronological order, and it presents a man who was more than a match for the expanding America of riverboats, gold rushes, and the vast westward movement that provided the material for his beloved novels.
This beautifully designed Harper Perennial Deluxe Edition includes French flaps, uncoated cover stock, and deckle-edged paper, making it the perfect gift book for fans of Twain.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (Oxford World's Classics)

by Mark Twain

When A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court was published in 1889, Mark Twain was undergoing a series of personal and professional crises. In his Introduction, M. Thomas Inge shows how what began as a literary burlesque of British chivalry and culture developed to tragedy and into a novel that remains a major literary and cultural text for generations of new readers. This edition reproduces a number of the original drawings by Dan Beard, of whom Twain said "He not only illustrates the text but he illustrates my thoughts."

About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Mark Twain: A Tramp Abroad, Following the Equator, Other Travels (Library of America No. 200)

by Mark Twain

It was as a humorous travel writer, in The Innocents Abroad and Roughing It, that Mark Twain first became widely known, and at the height of his career he returned to the genre in the works collected here. Like those earlier books, the frequently hilarious A Tramp Abroad (1880)-based on his family's 16-month sojourn in Europe from April 1878 to August 1879-blends autobiography and fiction, facts and tall tales. Twain's send-up of Old World customs as well as his critical dissections of Wagnerian opera and the German language are often interlaced with American reminiscences, whether in the form of an extended discourse on the language of blue jays or the recollection of an elaborate practical joke in Hannibal, Missouri, involving a printer's devil and a skeleton. A Tramp Abroad is presented here with the author's original sketches.

Written at a time of financial trouble and personal loss (the death of the author's beloved daughter Susy), Following the Equator (1897) is a darker and more politicized account of a lecture tour around the world, with Fiji, Australia, New Zealand, Ceylon, India, Mauritius, and South Africa among the stopovers. Using humorous but often biting anecdotes as well as keen journalist reporting, the book details bush life in Australia and the culture of the Maoris in New Zealand, while lashing out at social inequities such as the Indian caste system, and racist imperialism connected with European settlement and gold mining in southern Africa. Twain rounds out the volume with extensive historical accounts ranging from the Black Hole of Calcutta to the events in South Africa that would lead shortly to the Boer War.

This volume also includes 13 shorter pieces, most of them uncollected by the author, including a lengthy firsthand narrative of the shah of Persia's 1873 visit to London, an 1891 description of Richard Wagner's operas performed at Bayreuth, an 1897 account of Queen Victoria's jubilee in London, and an 1898 analysis of vitriolic Austrian parliamentary proceedings. The texts of several of these "other travels" are presented in newly corrected and fully restored versions.

LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

Mark Twain : The Innocents Abroad, Roughing It (Library of America)

by Mark Twain

This Library of America volume contains the novels that, when published, transformed an obscure Western journalist into a national celebrity. The Innocents Abroad and Roughing It (sometimes called The Innocents at Home) were immensely successful when first published and they remain today the most popular travel books ever written.

The Innocents Abroad (1869), based largely on letters written for New York and San Francisco papers, narrates the progress of the first American organized tour of Europe—to Naples, Smyrna, Constantinople, and Palestine. In his account Mark Twain assumes two alternate roles: at times the no-nonsense American who refuses to automatically venerate the famous sights of the Old World (preferring Lake Tahoe to Lake Como), or at times the put-upon simpleton, a gullible victim of flatterers and “frauds,” and an awestruck admirer of Russian royalty.

The result is a hilarious blend of vaudevillian comedy, actual travel guide, and stinging satire, directed at both the complacency of his fellow American travelers and their reverence for European relics. Out of the book emerges the first full-dress portrait of Mark Twain himself, the breezy, shrewd, and comical manipulator of English idioms and America’s mythologies about itself and its relation to the past.

Roughing It (1872) is the lighthearted account of Mark Twain’s actual and imagined adventures when he escaped the Civil War and joined his brother, the recently appointed Secretary of the Nevada Territory. His accounts of stagecoach travel, Native Americans, frontier society, the Mormons, the Chinese, and the codes, dress, food, and customs of the West are interspersed with his own experiences as a prospector, miner, journalist, boon companion, and lecturer as he traveled through Nevada, Utah, California, and even to the Hawaiian Islands.

Mark Twain’s passage from tenderfoot to old-timer is accomplished through a long series of increasingly comical episodes. The plot is relaxed enough to accommodate some immensely funny and random character sketches, animal fables, tall tales, and dramatic monologues. The result is an enduring picture of the old Western frontier in all its original vigor and variety.

In these two works, never before brought together so compactly, Mark Twain achieves his mastery of the vernacular style.

LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

The Collected Shorter Works of Mark Twain A Library of America Boxed Set

by Mark Twain

For the first time in a collector's boxed set, the authoratative two-volume Library of America edition of Mark Twain's incomparable short writings -- the stories, sketches, burlesques, hoaxes, tall tales, speeches, satires, and maxims of America's greatest humorist.

"Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand," Mark Twain once wrote. A master of deadpan hilarity, a storyteller who fashioned an exuberant style rooted in his western origins, and an enemy of injustice who used scathing invective and subtle satire to expose the "humbug" of his time, Twain, like Franklin, Whitman, and Lincoln, helped shape the American language into a unique democratic idiom that was to be heard around the world. Arranged chronologically and containing many pieces restored to the form in which Twain intended them to appear, this deluxe collector's boxed set shows with unprecedented clarity his literary evolution over the six decades of his career. As a riverboat pilot, Confederate irregular, silver miner, frontier journalist, publisher, and internationally acclaimed author, Twain witnessed the tragicomic beginning of the Civil War in Missouri, the frenzied opening of the West, the feverish corruption, avarice, and ambition of the Gilded Age, and the rise of U.S. imperialism. He wrote about political bosses, jumping frogs, robber barons, cats, women's suffrage, temperance, petrified men, the bicycle, the Franco-Prussian War, the telephone, the income tax, the insanity defense, injudicious swearing, and the advisability of political candidates preemptively telling the worst about themselves before others get around to it. This is the quintessential Mark Twain.

Boxed set contains Mark Twain: Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, & Essays Vol. 1: 1852-1890, 1,076 pp., and Mark Twain: Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, & Essays Vol. 2: 1891-1910, 1,050 pp., volumes #60 and #61 in the Library of America series.

LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

Mark Twain : Historical Romances : Prince & the Pauper / Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court / Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (Library of America)

by Mark Twain

In the three novels collected in this Library of America volume, Mark Twain turned his comic genius to a period that fascinated and repelled him in equal measure: medieval and Renaissance Europe. This lost world of stately pomp and unspeakable cruelty, artistic splendor and abysmal ignorance—the seeming opposite of brashly optimistic, commercial, democratic nineteenth-century America—engaged Twain’s imagination, inspiring a children’s classic, and astonishing fantasy of comedy and violence, and an unusual fictional biography.

Twain drew on his fascination with impersonation and the theme of the double in The Prince and the Pauper (1882), which brilliantly uses the device of identical boys from opposite ends of the social hierarchy to evoke the tumultuous contrasts of Henry VIII’s England. As the pauper Tom Canty is raised to the throne, while the rightful heir is cast out among thieves and beggars, Twain sustains one of his most compelling narratives. A perennial children’s favorite, the novel brings an impassioned American point of view to the injustices of traditional European society.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889) finds Twain in high satiric form. When hard-headed Yankee mechanic Hank Morgan is knocked out in a fight, he wakes up in Camelot in A.D. 528—and finds himself pitted against the medieval rituals and superstitions of King Arthur and his knights. In a hilarious burlesque of the age of chivalry and of its cult in the nineteenth-century American South, Twain demolishes knighthood’s romantic aura to reveal a brutish, violent society beset by ignorance. But the comic mood gives way to a darker questioning of both ancient and modern society, culminating in an astonishing apocalyptic conclusion that questions both American progress and Yankee “ingenuity” as Camelot is undone by the introduction of advanced technology.

“Taking into account . . . her origin, youth, sex, illiteracy, early environment, and the obstructing conditions under which she exploited her high gifts and made her conquest in the field and before the courts that tried her for her life—she is easily and by far the most extraordinary person the human race has ever known.” So Twain wrote of the heroine of Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (1896), his most elaborate work of historical reconstruction. A respectful and richly detailed chronicle, by turns admiring and indignant, Joan of Arc opens a fascinating window onto the moral imagination of America’s greatest comic writer.

LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Tom Sawyer, Detective (Evergreens)

by Mark Twain

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer charts the escapades of a thirteen-year-old boy growing up on the banks of the Mississippi. Testing the patience of his aunt Polly, the bold and sharp-witted Tom Sawyer frequently skips school in search of excitement, and the scrapes he gets into with his friend Huckleberry Finn range from innocent japes to more serious events such as the witnessing of a murder.

One of the most popular and influential American novels, Mark Twain's masterpiece is at the same time a highly entertaining romp which celebrates youth and freedom and a more profound investigation of his times, touching on themes such as race, revenge, and slavery. This volume includes Tom Sawyer, Detective, a sequel and pastiche of the detective genre, first published in 1896.

The Prince and the Pauper (Bantam Classics)

by Mark Twain

Rich with surprise and hilarious adventure, The Prince and the Pauper is a delightful satire of England’s romantic past and a joyful boyhood romp filled with the same tongue-in-cheek irony that sparks the best of Mark Twain’s tall tales. Two boys, one an urchin from London’s filthy lanes, the other a prince born in a lavish palace, unwittingly trade identities. Thus a bedraggled “Prince of Poverty” discovers that his private dreams have all come true—while a pampered Prince of Wales finds himself tossed into a rough-and-tumble world of squalid beggars and villainous thieves. Originally written as a story for children, The Prince and the Pauper is a classic novel for adults as well—through its stinging attack on the ageless human folly of attempting to measure true worth by outer appearances.

Pudd'nhead Wilson and Other Tales (Oxford World's Classics)

by Mark Twain

Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894), written in a more sombre vein than his other Mississippi writings, was Mark Twain's last serious work of fiction. It reveals the sinister forces that, towards the end of his life, Twain thought to be threatening the American dream. The central plot revolves around the tragedy of "Roxy," a mulatto slave whose attempt to save her son from his fate succeeds only in destroying him. An astringent work which raises the serious issue of racial difference, Pudd'nhead Wilson is considered by the critic F.R. Leavis to be "a classic of the use of popular modes--the sensational and the melodramatic." The volume also includes two other late works by Twain, Those Extraordinary Twins and The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg.

About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Modern Library Classics)

by Mark Twain

"All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn," Ernest Hemingway wrote, "It's the best book we've had." A complex masterpiece that has spawned volumes of scholarly exegesis and interpretative theories, it is at heart a compelling adventure story. Huck, in flight from his murderous father, and Nigger Jim, in flight from slavery, pilot their raft thrillingly through treacherous waters, surviving a crash with a steamboat, betrayal by rogues, and the final threat from the bourgeoisie. Informing all this is the presence of the River, described in palpable detail by Mark Twain, the former steamboat pilot, who transforms it into a richly metaphoric entity. Twain's other great innovation was the language of the book itself, which is expressive in a completely original way. "The invention of this language, with all its implications, gave a new dimension to our literature," Robert Penn Warren noted. "It is a language capable of poetry."

Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc

by Mark Twain, John Jeremiah Sullivan

Product Description An often overlooked masterpiece of historical fiction by the same author who brought us beloved classics such as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, here is Mark Twain's last completed novel--a work of lifelong fascination that involved over a decade of rigorous research.Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, by the Sieur Louis de Conte (original full title) is the rigorously researched biography of the young girl who saved a nation, installed a King, and was burned alive at the stake, told in the voice of a fictional page (de Conte) and with an additional narrative frame of having been "translated out of the ancient French into Modern English from the original unpublished manuscript in the National Archives of France."With a side of Twain--reverent instead of mocking--few readers know, the book covers Joan of Arc's childhood, her tours of battle, and her trial and martrydom.In Mark Twain's own words: "I like Joan of Arc best of all my books; and it is the best; I know it perfectly well. And besides, it furnished me seven times the pleasure afforded me by any of the others; twelve years of preparation, and two years of writing. The others need no preparation and got none."For enthusiasts of both Joan of Arc and Mark Twain, this brilliant, fascinating work confirms once again Twain's storytelling genius and his enduring legacy that continues to resonate with readers today. About the Author Mark Twain, who was born Samuel L. Clemens in Missouri in 1835, wrote some of the most enduring works of literature in the English language, including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc was his last completed book—and, by his own estimate, his best. Its acquisition by Harper & Brothers allowed Twain to stave off bankruptcy. He died in 1910. 

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Norton Critical Editions)

by Mark Twain

This perennially popular Norton Critical Edition reprints for the first time the definitive Iowa-California text of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, complete with all original illustrations by Edward Windsor Kemble and John Harley. The text is accompanied by explanatory annotations. "Contexts and Sources" provides readers with a rich selection of documents related to the historical background, language, composition, sale, reception, and newly discovered first half of the manuscript of Mark Twain's greatest work. Included are letters on the writing of the novel, excerpts from the author's autobiography, samples of bad poetry that inspired his satire (including an effort by young Sam Clemens himself), a section on the censorship of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by schools and libraries over a hundred-year period, and commentary by David Carkeet on dialects of the book and by Earl F. Briden on its "racist" illustrations. In addition, this section reprints the full texts of both "Sociable Jimmy," upon which is based the controversial theory that Huck speaks in a "black voice," and "A True Story, Repeated Word for Word As I Heard It," the first significant attempt by Mark Twain to capture the speech of an African American in print.

"Criticism" of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is divided into "Early Responses" (including the first negative review) and "Modern Views" by Victor A. Doyno, T. S. Eliot, Jane Smiley, David L. Smith, Shelley Fisher Fishkin (the "black voice" thesis), James R. Kincaid (a rebuttal of Fishkin), and David R. Sewell. Also included is Toni Morrison's moving personal "Introduction" to the troubling experience of reading and re-reading Mark Twain's masterpiece.

“A Chronology and Selected Bibliography” are also included.

Pudd'nhead Wilson and, Those extraordinary twins

by Mark Twain

This edition of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court reprints the text of the first American edition, approved by Clemens and published by his own company. Accompanying the text are thirteen of the original illustrations by Daniel Carter Beard, many of which are caricatures of well-known figures of the day. Annotations point out significant textual problems and variants, as well as explaining unfamiliar references within the text. "Backgrounds and Sources" includes selections on King Arthur from the Oxford Companion to English Literature; on the total eclipse from The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus by Washington Irving; and on the "king's touch," the ascetic saints, and the financing of the Mansion House by W. E. H. Lecky. Selections from Clemens's letters, notebooks, autobiography, and other writings and newspaper reports of his 1886 manuscript reading at Governor's Island show how the novel developed. A section of the Beard illustrations includes material by Beard, Clemens, and Henry Nash Smith. The English edition is discussed by Dennis Welland.

Early critical views are by Sylvester Baxter, William Dean Howells, Andrew Lang, Rudyard Kipling, Charles Whibley, Albert Bigelow Paine, John B. Hoben, and anonymous reviewers in the London Daily Telegraph and the Boston Literary World. The later critical essays are by Howard G. Baetzhold, James D. Williams, Kenneth S. Lynn, James M. Cox, Louis J. Budd, Henry Nash Smith, David Ketterer, and Everett Carter.

A Selected Bibliography is also included.

The Devil's Race-Track: Mark Twain's "Great Dark" Writings, The Best from Which Was the Dream? and Fables of Man

by Mark Twain

Mark Twain explores the darker side of life in these lesser-known later writings dealing with personal tragedies, nightmarish world events, and a doubtful cosmic order. He views his own situation as that of a ship trapped in a fearsome Bermuda Triangle-like region, the Devil's Race-Track. He sees history as a treadmill of endlessly and monotonously repeated events. And he conceives of a universal food chain, a vast round of devourers who in their turn become victims, humankind and God included. The tone of these writings is lightened considerably by Mark Twain's sagely ironic humor and his warmth, which together balance his tough-mindedness. And even when he shows the human race caught in some vicious circle, he may be seen courageously seeking a way out and at times believing he has found it.

The Prince and the Pauper (Dover Thrift Editions)

by Mark Twain

This treasured historical satire, played out in two very different socioeconomic worlds of 16th-century England, centers around the lives of two boys born in London on the same day: Edward, Prince of Wales, and Tom Canty, a street beggar. During a chance encounter, the two realize they are identical and, as a lark, decide to exchange clothes and roles — a situation that briefly, but drastically, alters the lives of both youngsters.
The Prince, dressed in rags, wanders about the city's boisterous neighborhoods among the lower classes and endures a series of hardships; poor Tom, now living with the royals, is constantly filled with the dread of being discovered for who and what he really is.
Brimming with gentle humor and discerning social scrutiny, this timeless tale of transposed identities remains one of Twain's most popular and best-loved novels.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (Mark Twain Library)

by Mark Twain

A Connecticut Yankee is Mark Twain’s most ambitious work, a tour de force with a science-fiction plot told in the racy slang of a Hartford workingman, sparkling with literary hijinks as well as social and political satire. Mark Twain characterized his novel as "one vast sardonic laugh at the trivialities, the servilities of our poor human race." The Yankee, suddenly transported from his native nineteenth-century America to the sleepy sixth-century Britain of King Arthur and the Round Table, vows brashly to "boss the whole country inside of three weeks." And so he does. Emerging as "The Boss," he embarks on an ambitious plan to modernize Camelot—with unexpected results.

Daniel Carter Beard illustrated the first edition of Yankee in 1889, and Mark Twain praised his work as "better than the book—which is a good deal for me to say, I reckon." This Mark Twain Library edition reprints the text based on the author’s manuscript, all 221 of Beard’s illustrations, and the notes from the California scholarly edition.

Manga Classics Adventures of Tom Sawyer

by Mark Twain, Crystal Chan

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain is a novel about a young boy growing up in the fictional small town of Hannibal, Missouri along the Mississippi River during the 1840s. Tom Sawyer lives with his Aunt Polly and his half-brother Sid. Life for Tom is a series of grand adventures that include his best friend "Huck" Finn, the love of his life Becky Thatcher, buried treasures, scoundrels, thieves and body snatchers. Manga Classics brings a brilliant new light to Mark Twain's very first novel that new readers will embrace and life-long fans will enjoy.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Arcturus Classics)

by Mark Twain

To escape from his violent and drunken father, a 13-year-old boy from the wrong side of the tracks, Huckleberry Finn, fakes his own death and floats away on a raft down the Mississippi with Jim, a runaway slave. In a series of unforgettable adventures narrated by Huck, they encounter a cross-section of characters from slave-hunters, and con men to feuding aristocrats. This was the first major American novel to be written in the vernacular, a dark and funny satire that exposes the bigotry and hypocrisy of provincial America during Mark Twain's lifetime.

The Mark Twain Collection

by Mark Twain

Mark Twain's novels are filled with humor, wit, and astounding insight into the world of the 19th-century United States. Written entirely in the vernacular, these. classic satirical tales exposed the bigotry and hypocrisy of American life. The cheerful Tom Sawyer, the good natured Huck Finn, the independent Hank Morgan, and the well-meaning Tom Canty are quintessential Twain characters, full of life, verve, and a sense of justice they often felt was missing from the world around them.

Included are four of his greatest and most popular novels: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and The Prince and the Pauper. They are the perfect introduction to the work of one of America's foremost talents.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (Volume 4) (Mark Twain Library)

by Mark Twain

A Connecticut Yankee is Mark Twain’s most ambitious work, a tour de force with a science-fiction plot told in the racy slang of a Hartford workingman, sparkling with literary hijinks as well as social and political satire. Mark Twain characterized his novel as "one vast sardonic laugh at the trivialities, the servilities of our poor human race." The Yankee, suddenly transported from his native nineteenth-century America to the sleepy sixth-century Britain of King Arthur and the Round Table, vows brashly to "boss the whole country inside of three weeks." And so he does. Emerging as "The Boss," he embarks on an ambitious plan to modernize Camelot―with unexpected results.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 125th Anniversary Edition: The only authoritative text based on the complete, original manuscript (Volume 9) (Mark Twain Library)

by Mark Twain

This 125th Anniversary edition of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is expanded with updated notes and references and a selection of original documents—letters, advertisements, playbills—some never before published, from Twain's first "book tour" to promote its original publication. This is the only edition of Twain's masterpiece based on his complete manuscript, including the 663 pages found in a Los Angeles attic in 1990. It includes all of the illustrations commissioned by Mark Twain, historical notes, a glossary, maps, and selected manuscripts.

Tom Sawyer Abroad / Tom Sawyer, Detective (Mark Twain Library)

by Mark Twain, Richard A. Watson, Victor Fischer

"Do you reckon Tom Sawyer was satisfied after all them adventures? No, he wasn't. It only just pisoned him for more." So Huck declares at the start of these once-celebrated but now little-known sequels to his own adventures. Tom, Huck, and Jim set sail to Africa in a futuristic air balloon, where they survive encounters with lions, robbers, and fleas and see some of the world's greatest wonders in Tom Sawyer Abroad. The boys then turn sleuth in Tom Sawyer, Detective as they attempt to solve a mysterious murder in this burlesque of the immensely popular detective novels of the time. Replete with down-home, backwoods Missouri wisdom, these two stories tackle every subject from the Crusades and chronometers to ghosts and swearing popes.

This authoritative edition includes all of the original illustrations Mark Twain commissioned from Dan Beard ("the only man who can correctly illustrate my writings") and A. B. Frost ("the best humorous artist that I know"). Based directly on the author's manuscripts, incorporating only his revisions and restoring many passages once suppressed by fastidious editors, the texts are presented here in the only form Twain intended them.

Mark Twain’s Book of Animals (Volume 3) (Jumping Frogs: Undiscovered, Rediscovered, and Celebrated Writings of Mark Twain)

by Mark Twain

Longtime admirers of Mark Twain are aware of how integral animals were to his work as a writer, from his first stories through his final years, including many pieces that were left unpublished at his death. This beautiful volume, illustrated with 30 new images by master engraver Barry Moser, gathers writings from the full span of Mark Twain’s career and elucidates his special attachment to and regard for animals. What may surprise even longtime readers and fans is that Twain was an early and ardent animal welfare advocate, the most prominent American of his day to take up that cause. Edited and selected by Shelley Fisher Fishkin, who has also supplied an introduction and afterword, Mark Twain’s Book of Animals includes stories that are familiar along with those that are appearing in print for the first time.

The Prince and the Pauper (Volume 5) (Mark Twain Library)

by Mark Twain

"What am I writing? A historical tale of 300 years ago, simply for the love of it." Mark Twain’s "tale" became his first historical novel, The Prince and the Pauper, published in 1881. Intricately plotted, it was intended to have the feel of history even though it was only the stuff of legend. In sixteenth-century England, young Prince Edward (son of Henry VIII) and Tom Canty, a pauper boy who looks exactly like him, are suddenly forced to change places. The prince endures "rags & hardships" while the pauper suffers the "horrible miseries of princedom." Mark Twain called his book a "tale for young people of all ages," and it has become a classic of American literature.

The first edition in 1881 was fully illustrated by Frank Merrill, John Harley, and L. S. Ipsen. The boys in these illustrations, Mark Twain said, "look and dress exactly as I used to see them cast in my mind. . . . It is a vast pleasure to see them cast in the flesh, so to speak." This Mark Twain Library edition exactly reproduces the text of the California scholarly edition, including all of the 192 illustrations that so pleased the author.

Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer among the Indians: And Other Unfinished Stories (Volume 7) (Mark Twain Library)

by Mark Twain

o Includes the authoritative texts for eleven pieces written between 1868 and 1902

o Publishes, for the first time, the complete text of "Villagers of 1840-3," Mark Twain's astounding feat of memory

o Features a biographical directory and notes that reflect extensive new research on Mark Twain's early life in Missouri

Throughout his career, Mark Twain frequently turned for inspiration to memories of his youth in the Mississippi River town of Hannibal, Missouri. What has come to be known as the Matter of Hannibal inspired two of his most famous books, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, and provided the basis for the eleven pieces reprinted here. Most of these selections (eight of them fiction and three of them autobiographical) were never completed, and all were left unpublished. Written between 1868 and 1902, they include a diverse assortment of adventures, satires, and reminiscences in which the characters of his own childhood and of his best-loved fiction, particularly Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, come alive again. The autobiographical recollections culminate in an astounding feat of memory titled "Villagers of 1840-3" in which the author, writing for himself alone at the age of sixty-one, recalls with humor and pathos the characters of some one hundred and fifty people from his childhood. Accompanied by notes that reflect extensive new research on Mark Twain's early life in Missouri, the selections in this volume offer a revealing view of Mark Twain's varied and repeated attempts to give literary expression to the Matter of Hannibal.

The Innocents Abroad: or, The New Pilgrims' Progress (Modern Library Classics)

by Mark Twain

The Innocents Abroad is one of the most prominent and influential travel books ever written about Europe and the Holy Land. In it, the collision of the American “New Barbarians” and the European “Old World” provides much comic fodder for Mark Twain—and a remarkably perceptive lens on the human condition. Gleefully skewering the ethos of American tourism in Europe, Twain’s lively satire ultimately reveals just what it is that defines cultural identity. As Twain himself points out, “Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” And Jane Jacobs observes in her Introduction, “If the reader is American, he may also find himself on a tour of his own psyche.”

Murder A Mystery And A Marriage A Story

by Mark Twain

An unpublished Mark Twain story surfaces 125 years after it was first written—a must-read for any Twain enthusiast and a perfect introduction to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

America's great love affair with Mark Twain continues with the paperback publication of this new work that first emerged in the fall of 2001. , A Murder, a Mystery, and a Marriage, Twain's delightful rendition of life (and a disturbing death) in the mythical hamlet of Deer Lick, Missouri, chronicles the fortunes of a humble farmer, John Gray, determined to marry off his daughter Mary to the scion of the town's wealthiest family. But the sudden appearance of a stranger found lying unconscious in the snow not only derails Gray's plans but also leads to a mysterious murder whose solution lies at the heart of this captivating story. Including a foreword and afterword by best-selling humorist Roy Blount Jr. and stunning, award-winning paintings by illustrator Peter de Seve, A Murder, a Mystery, and a Marriage will delight Twain lovers for generations to come. Winner of the 2001 Hamilton King Award from the Society of Illustrators.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (Enriched Classics)

by Mark Twain

A nineteenth century American travels back in time to sixth century England in this darkly comic social satire.

Hank Morgan is the pinnacle of nineteenth century Yankee practicality. After getting hit over the head with a crowbar in a brawl, he awakens to find that he has traveled back in time to sixth century England, the domain of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. His basic knowledge of such subjects as astronomy and mechanics quickly gains him a reputation as a powerful magician, and earns him the nickname "The Boss." He wastes no time in taking advantage of the situation and making certain improvements to Arthur's kingdom: laying ground wires for telegraph and telephone services; establishing a newspaper; and working to undermine the feudal system and replace it with democracy. But the social class system, the innate superstitions of populace, and the power of the church prevent Hank from effecting a lasting change.

Written during a time of personal philosophical change for Twain, this dark comic novel begins as a critique of monarchic government, but ultimately satirizes the modern technology the Boss tries to bring to the Britons, culminating in a terrifying, apocalyptic vision of war and chaos.

This edition includes:
-A concise introduction that gives the reader important background information
-A chronology of the author's life and work
-A timeline of significant events that provides the book's historical context
-An outline of key themes and plot points to guide the reader's own interpretations
-Detailed explanatory notes
-Critical analysis, including contemporary and modern perspectives on the work
-Discussion questions to promote lively classroom and book group interaction
-A list of recommended related books and films to broaden the reader's experience

Enriched Classics offer readers affordable editions of great works of literature enhanced by helpful notes and insightful commentary. The scholarship provided in Enriched Classics enables readers to appreciate, understand, and enjoy the world's finest books to their full potential.

Tom Sawyer Abroad / Tom Sawyer, Detective (Volume 2) (Mark Twain Library)

by Mark Twain

These unjustly neglected works, among the most enjoyable of Mark Twain's novels, follow Tom, Huck, and Jim as they travel across the Atlantic in a balloon, then down the Mississippi to help solve a mysterious crime. Both with the original illustrations by Dan Beard and A.B. Frost.

“Do you reckon Tom Sawyer was satisfied after all them adventures? No, he wasn’t. It only just pisoned him for more.” So Huck declares at the start of these once-celebrated but now little-known sequels to his own adventures. Tom, Huck, and Jim set sail to Africa in a futuristic air balloon, where they survive encounters with lions, robbers, and fleas and see some of the world’s greatest wonders.

No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger (Volume 3) (Mark Twain Library)

by Mark Twain

This is the only authoritative text of this late novel. It reproduces the manuscript which Mark Twain wrote last, and the only one he finished or called the "The Mysterious Stranger." Albert Bigelow Paine's edition of the same name has been shown to be a textual fraud.

A Tramp Abroad (Modern Library Classics)

by Mark Twain

In A Tramp Abroad, Mark Twain’s unofficial sequel to The Innocents Abroad, the author records his hilarious and diverse observations and insights while on a fifteen-month walking trip through Central Europe and the Alps. “Here you have Twain’s inimitable mix,” writes Dave Eggers in his Introduction, “of the folksy and the effortlessly erudite, his unshakable good sense and his legendary wit, his knack for the easy relation of a perfect anecdote, and some achingly beautiful nature writing.”

This Modern Library Paperback Classic reproduces the text of the first American edition and features new explanatory notes and a critical Afterword by Kerry Driscoll, professor of English at Saint Joseph College in Connecticut.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer: A Library of America Paperback Classic

by Mark Twain

"Mark Twain is the true father of all American literature."
-Eugene O'Neill
Mark Twain is perhaps the most widely read and enjoyed of all our national writers. Tom Sawyer, according to Twain, "is simply a hymn put into prose form to give it a worldly air," a book in which nostalgia is so strong that it dissolves the tensions and perplexities that assert themselves in the later works. It is filled with comic and melodramatic adventure, with horseplay and poetic evocations of scenery, and with characters who have become central to American mythology.
For almost thirty years, The Library of America has presented America's best and most significant writing in acclaimed hardcover editions. Now, a new series, Library of America Paperback Classics, offers attractive and affordable books that bring The Library of America's authoritative texts within easy reach of every reader. Each book features an introductory essay by one of a leading writer, as well as a detailed chronology of the author's life and career, an essay on the choice and history of the text, and notes.
The contents of this Paperback Classic are drawn from Mark Twain: Mississippi Writings, volume number 5 in the Library of America series. It is joined in the series by six companion volumes, gathering the collected works of Mark Twain.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

by Mark Twain

When A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court was published in 1889, Mark Twain was undergoing a series of personal and professional crises. Thus what began as a literary burlesque of British chivalry and culture grew into a disturbing satire of modern technology and social thought. The story of Hank Morgan, a nineteenth-century American who is accidentally returned to sixth-century England, is a powerful analysis of such issues as monarchy versus democracy and free will versus determinism, but it is also one of Twain's finest comic novels, still fresh and funny after more than 100 years. In his introduction, M. Thomas Inge shows how A Connecticut Yankee develops from comedy to tragedy and so into a novel that remains a major literary and cultural text for new generations of readers. This edition reproduces a number of the original drawings by Dan Beard, of whom Twain said `he not only illustrates the text but he illustrates my thoughts'.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Volume 28) (Knickerbocker Classics, 28)

by Mark Twain

Rediscover the classic American tale or join Tom Sawyer's adventures on for the first time.
A favorite among young readers and adults alike, Mark Twain's Adventures of Tom Sawyer, first published in 1876, is considered to one of the great novels about American adolescence along with its sequel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Tom Sawyer is a young orphan living with his half brother Sid at their Aunt Polly's house. A bad apple in school, he resists all efforts at correction, except when it comes to courting the lovely Becky Thatcher. Along with his buddy Huck Finn, Tom fools around, plays practical jokes and causes trouble--until the day when the two witness a murder.
Many readers see Adventures of Tom Sawyer as a children's book, however there are shades to this tale that even adults who return to the story may have missed.
Complete and unabridged, this elegantly designed, clothbound edition features an elastic closure and a new introduction by Sarah Kerman.

A Novel Journal: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

by Mark Twain

A scathing and often hilarious tale set in the antebellum American South, Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has transcended the children’s literature genre and serves as a much-analyzed and admired political commentary on the era. It’s also a well-loved tale of murder, robbers, river travel, and coming of age, not to mention a classic of American literature.

A Novel Journal: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn allows fans to lose themselves in the book’s pages each time they sit down to write. A fun literary keepsake, the journal features the entire text of Twain’s work in tiny print that serves as page lines. Whether used to craft the latest political commentary or to serve as a daily record of events, the words of Mark Twain are likely to add inspiration to any writing endeavor.

Packaged in a luxurious heat-burnished cover with illustrated endpapers and a colored elastic band to close pages tight, this book is a great gift or collectible for fans of Mark Twain.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Enriched Classics)

by Mark Twain

Enriched Classicsoffer readers accessible editions of great works of literature enhanced by helpful notes and commentary. Each book includes educational tools alongside the text, enabling students and readers alike to gain a deeper and more developed understanding of the writer and their work.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn follows Tom Sawyer’s best friend on his wildly entertaining exploits with runaway slave, Jim, recounted in vernacular English and vibrant descriptions of life along the Mississippi River. Set in a Southern antebellum society, which had ceased to exist at the time of its publication, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is often regarded as a scathing satire on the institution of racism and the attitudes that supported it. However, it is also a playful story about the joys and evils of childhood as well as the limitless possibilities it allows.

Enriched Classicsenhance your engagement by introducing and explaining the historical and cultural significance of the work, the author’s personal history, and what impact this book had on subsequent scholarship. Each book includes discussion questions that help clarify and reinforce major themes and reading recommendations for further research.

Read with confidence.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer: A Norton Critical Edition (Norton Critical Editions)

by Mark Twain

As featured on PBS’s The Great American Read
The text of this Norton Critical Edition is based, with typesetting errors corrected, on the first U.S. edition (1876), the most authoritative of the editions published in Twain’s lifetime. “Backgrounds and Contexts” provides students with the standard source materials often cited by critics―Twain’s stories of Good and Bad Boys, his Boy’s Manuscript, his correspondence with William Dean Howells, and his 1870 letter to Will Bowen. This section also includes lesser-known but valuable contextual materials, among them Twain’s journalistic description of school exercise and the discussion of Perry Davis’ Pain Killer and other nineteenth-century nostrums.

“Criticism” includes interpretations by William Dean Howells, Hamlin L. Hill, Judith Fetterley, Alan Gribben, Glenn Hendler, Carter Revard, and Susan R. Gannon.

A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn with Illustrations by Eric Powell

by Mark Twain

Product description The classic novel by celebrated American author Mark Twain tells of a teenage misfit accompanied by an escaping slave, Jim, as the two float down the Mississippi River by raft. As their journey unfolds, Huck and Jim encounter adventure, danger, and a deftly scribed cast of characters that are by turns both menacing and hilarious. This special edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn contains 21 illustrations by comics industry star Eric Powell ( The Goon), and presents the material as Twain intended. About the Author Eric Powell is a writer and artist from Nashville, Tennessee who has contributed work for every major publisher in the comics industry. In 1999 Eric launched his critically acclaimed creator owned series THE GOON. In 2002 Eric Launched ALBATROSS EXPLODING FUNNYBOOKS in an effort to keep the Goon alive when no other publisher wanted it because it was too "different." But the readers spoke and The Goon quickly became an indy hit and picked up a diehard cult following. The Goon found a home and a wider audience with DARK HORSE COMICS, but Eric continued to publish creator owned comics through Albatross such as his all ages comic CHIMICHANGA and Rebecca Sugar’s (creator of Steven Universe) PUG DAVIS. Eric has spent his career creating and promoting the validity and importance of creator owned comics through Albatross and other publishers such as Dark Horse and Image Comics. In 2016 Eric rededicated himself in earnest to his publishing company, ALBATROSS FUNNYBOOKS, and launched his new fantasy series HILLBILLY, his kid's horror anthology SPOOK HOUSE, as well as other creator owned titles. Eric has been working in collaboration with acclaimed director David Fincher, Tim Miller, and Blur Studios to bring The Goon to life on the big screen as an animated feature film.

Manga Classics Adv of Huckleberry Finn

by Mark Twain

Chafed by the "sivilized" restrictions of his foster home, and weary of his drunkard father's brutality, 14 year-old Huck Finn fakes his own death and sets off on a raft down the Mississippi River. He is soon joined by Jim, an escaped slave. Together, they experience a series of rollicking adventures that have amused readers, young and old, for over a century. The fugitives become close friends as they weather storms together aboard the raft and spend idyllic days swimming, frying catfish suppers, and enjoying their independence.

Read-Aloud Classics: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Read-Along Classics)

by Mark Twain, Charles Nurnberg

Share this classic character and his quintessential stories about adventure, daring, and cleverness with a new generation with Read-Aloud Classic: The Adventure of Tom Sawyer.

First published in 1876, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer has been a children's favorite since its publication, and this edition adapts the classic into a story young children will love. Introduce your children to the adventures of the Tom Sawyer, a timeless character full of mischief, silliness, and bravery. This faithful introduction brings to life the parts of Tom Sawyer that young children will understand and enjoy, while also stepping around inappropriate portions.

The modern world is bursting at the seams with technological games and distracting screens for kids to occupy themselves with. The Read-Aloud Classics series is the perfect thing to shows them that you can go on incredible adventures without a controller and experience wonderful stories without a touch screen. Best of all, you will create memories as you read the stories together.

The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg (The Art of the Novella)

by Mark Twain

"Why, you simple creatures, the weakest of all weak things is a virtue which has not been tested in the fire."

Written on hotel stationary while in Europe on the run from American creditors, soon after the death of a daughter, The Man That Corrupted Handleyburg is often cited as a work of bitter cynicism—a statement on America, to some, on the Dreyfus Case, to others—created by a weary author at the end of his career.

Another appreciation, however, is that it is, simply, Mark Twain at his best. The story of a mysterious stranger who orchestrates a fraud embarrassing the hypocritical citizens of "incorruptible" Hadleyburg. The novella is an exceptionally crafted work intertwining a devious and suspenseful plot with some of the wittiest dialogue Twain ever wrote. And like the most masterful literature, it subverts any notion of easy conclusion: is Hadleyburg ruined, or liberated? Is the mysterious stranger Satan, or a hero? Is this a book of revenge, or redemption? One thing is clear: This brilliant novella is a complex and compassionate consideration of the human character by a master at the height of his form.

The Art of The Novella Series

Too short to be a novel, too long to be a short story, the novella is generally unrecognized by academics and publishers. Nonetheless, it is a form beloved and practiced by literature's greatest writers. In the Art Of The Novella series, Melville House celebrates this renegade art form and its practitioners with titles that are, in many instances, presented in book form for the first time.

Classic Starts®: the Adventures of Tom Sawyer

by Mark Twain

Cause some mischief with troublemakers Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, now written with young readers in mind! Young Tom Sawyer lives on the Mississippi River with his Aunt Polly and her nosy cat. He loves jam, and he hates to wear shoes. He'd rather become a pirate than go to school-and he knows exactly what he'd do with pirate gold if he ever found some! Join Tom on adventure after adventure as he makes friends, hunts for buried treasure, and explores the banks of the Mississippi. But what happens when the going gets tough? Will Tom be brave enough to escape spooky houses, thunderstorms, and caves full of bats? With foil on the cover and vibrant full-color art from Rosalia Radosti, this adaptation of Mark Twain's tale of American boyhood promises to be an exciting first chapter book. From Starry Forest Books, Classic Adventures brings action-packed adaptations of favorite classics to early readers.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Masterpiece Library Edition)

by Mark Twain

Troublesome Tom Sawyer spends his boyhood making mischief, but when things take a dire turn, he must bravely save the day.

• Rediscover Mark Twain's first classic in this elegant Masterpiece Library Edition.
• Deluxe, durably bound keepsake volume.
• Embossed covers with iridescent accents.
• Reinforced cloth quarter-binding.
• Acid-free archival-quality paper.
• Cream-color pages with font, type size, and line spacing chosen for comfortable reading.
• Ribbon bookmark.
• A must for any library.
• Dimensions: 6-1/2'' wide x 9-1/4'' high..
• 232 pages.

American writer Mark Twain (1835-1910), also known by his real name, Samuel Clemens, was a humorist, journalist, steamboat pilot, and inventor. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is based on his childhood in Hannibal, Missouri.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Masterpiece Library Edition)

by Mark Twain

Free-spirited Huck Finn joins Jim, a man escaping slavery, on a fateful journey down the Mississippi River in this watershed work of American literature.

• Rediscover Mark Twain's classic in this elegant Masterpiece Library Edition.
• Deluxe, durably bound keepsake volume.
• Embossed covers with iridescent accents.
• Reinforced cloth quarter-binding.
• Acid-free archival-quality paper.
• Cream-color pages with font, type size, and line spacing chosen for comfortable reading.
• Ribbon bookmark.
• A must for any library.
• Dimensions: 6-1/2'' wide x 9-1/4'' high.
• 328 pages.

American writer Mark Twain (1835-1910), also known by his real name, Samuel Clemens, was a humorist, journalist, steamboat pilot, and inventor. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is based on his childhood in Hannibal, Missouri.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer A Novel

by Mark Twain

One of the best-known classics of American literature, Mark Twain's indelible novel of boyhood, friendship, and adventure.

Few works of fiction are more known and beloved for keenly documenting the triumphs, trials, exultations, and despairs of boyhood than The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Set in 1840s Missouri, Mark Twain's picaresque novel follows a rambunctious, rebellious rascal whose exploits are the delight of the town boys and the bane of the adults trying to "civilize" them at home, in school, and at church.

Tom and his friends, including Huck Finn (the son of the town drunk and star of Twain's subsequent masterpiece, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn), skip school and run away, play pirates and robbers, go hunting in caves, fake their own deaths, poke around haunted houses, frolic along the river banks, and triumphantly interrupt their own funeral sermons. They believe in magic and superstitions, witness body snatchers and murder, and search for--and find--buried treasure.

Twain's mastery of satire and droll humor, his unparalleled narrative skill in capturing the incomparable fierce joys of childhood, and his piercing attentiveness to the ever-present tension between the freedom of adolescence and the confining expectations of social propriety have made this timeless tale of Americana a revered classic for generations that continues to enthrall readers today.

This deluxe edition features French flaps, a deckle edge, and a stunning cover designed using authentic printers and metal/wood type manufactured in the 1840s.

Mark Twain's Hawaii A Humorous Romp through History

by Mark Twain

Mark Twain’s wit and wisdom is timeless. Mark Twain’s Hawaii: A Humorous Romp through History, combines Twain’s own writings on Hawaii with personal reminiscences by others who met him at that time, and traces Twain’s journey through the region just as he experienced it in 1866. The book highlights Twain’s humor, travel in the 19th century, history, social commentary, and the exotic locale in an authoritative and entertaining volume for Twain fans and Hawaii enthusiasts.

Pudd'nhead Wilson The Authoritative Edition, with Those Extraordinary Twins

by Mark Twain

This critical edition publishes—for the first time anywhere—the original manuscript and revised versions of Pudd’nhead Wilson.

Mark Twain's story of the antebellum South, first published in 1894, continues to prompt conversations about race and the dire legacy of American slavery. At its heart is Roxy, a mixed-race woman enslaved to a wealthy Missouri family. To save her infant son (whose father was white) from being "sold down the river," Roxy switches him in the cradle with her master's son, setting in motion a train of ironic and bitter events. With its mixture of farce, social commentary, tragedy, and satire, Pudd'nhead Wilson has come to be one of Mark Twain's most-read and most-studied works.

But few have read the original Pudd'nhead Wilson. The text familiar since 1894, as editor Benjamin Griffin shows, was heavily edited and censored—first by the author himself under pressure from family and friends, then by his publishers. Now the Mark Twain Project makes available the full text of the Morgan Library manuscript (the original version), together with a critical text of the revised version, stripped of the changes imposed by Mark Twain's editors and publishers—two fascinating ways to encounter this troubled and troubling novel.

Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn

by Mark Twain

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

Along with Blake and Dickens, Mark Twain was one of the nineteenth century’s greatest chroniclers of childhood. These two novels reveal different aspects of his genius: Tom Sawyer is a much-loved story about the sheer pleasure of being a boy; Huckleberry Finn, the book Hemingway said was the source of all the American fiction that followed it, is both a hilarious account of an incorrigible truant and a tremendous parable of innocence in conflict with the fallen adult world.

Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1 - The Complete and Authoritative Edition

by Mark Twain

Mark Twain's final and uncensored masterpiece, presented in three volumes, is a landmark publication in American literature.

“Twain will begin to seem strange again, alluring and still astonishing . . . in ways that still resonate with us.”—New York Times

“His crystalline humor and expansive range are a continuous source of delight and awe.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review

"I've struck it!" Mark Twain wrote in a 1904 letter to a friend. "And I will give it away—to you. You will never know how much enjoyment you have lost until you get to dictating your autobiography." Thus, after dozens of false starts and hundreds of pages, Twain embarked on his "Final (and Right) Plan" for telling the story of his life. His innovative notion—to "talk only about the thing which interests you for the moment"—meant that his thoughts could range freely. The strict instruction that many of these texts remain unpublished for 100 years meant that when they came out, he would be "dead, and unaware, and indifferent," and that he was therefore free to speak his "whole frank mind." The year 2010 marks the 100th anniversary of Twain's death. In celebration of this important milestone and in honor of the cherished tradition of publishing Mark Twain's works, UC Press is proud to offer for the first time Mark Twain's uncensored autobiography in its entirety and exactly as he left it. This major literary event brings to readers, admirers, and scholars the first of three volumes and presents Mark Twain's authentic and unsuppressed voice, brimming with humor, ideas, and opinions, and speaking clearly from the grave as he intended.

Editors:

Harriet E. Smith, Benjamin Griffin, Victor Fischer, Michael B. Frank, Sharon K. Goetz, Leslie Myrick

Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2 - The Complete and Authoritative Edition

by Mark Twain, Robert Hirst

Mark Twain's final and uncensored masterpiece, presented in three volumes, is a landmark publication in American literature.



"Twain will begin to seem strange again, alluring and still astonishing . . . in ways that still resonate with us."--New York Times



"His crystalline humor and expansive range are a continuous source of delight and awe."--Los Angeles Times Book Review



Mark Twain's complete, uncensored Autobiography was an instant bestseller when the first volume was published in 2010, on the centennial of the author's death, as he requested. Published to rave reviews, the Autobiography was hailed as the capstone of Twain's career. It captures his authentic and unsuppressed voice, speaking clearly from the grave and brimming with humor, ideas, and opinions.



The eagerly-awaited Volume 2 delves deeper into Mark Twain's life, uncovering the many roles he played in his private and public worlds. Filled with his characteristic blend of humor and ire, the narrative ranges effortlessly across the contemporary scene. He shares his views on writing and speaking, his preoccupation with money, and his contempt for the politics and politicians of his day. Affectionate and scathing by turns, his intractable curiosity and candor are everywhere on view.



Editors: Benjamin Griffin and Harriet E. Smith

Associate Editors: Victor Fischer, Michael B. Frank, Sharon K. Goetz and Leslie Diane Myrick

Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 3 - The Complete and Authoritative Edition

by Mark Twain

Mark Twain's final and uncensored masterpiece, presented in three volumes, is a landmark publication in American literature.



"Twain will begin to seem strange again, alluring and still astonishing . . . in ways that still resonate with us."--New York Times



"His crystalline humor and expansive range are a continuous source of delight and awe."--Los Angeles Times Book Review



When the first volume of Mark Twain's uncensored Autobiography was published in 2010, it was hailed as an essential addition to the shelf of his works and a crucial document for our understanding of the great humorist's life and times. This third and final volume crowns and completes his life's work. Like its companion volumes, it chronicles Twain's inner and outer life through a series of daily dictations that go wherever his fancy leads.



Created from March 1907 to December 1909, these dictations present Mark Twain at the end of his life: receiving an honorary degree from Oxford University; railing against Theodore Roosevelt; founding numerous clubs; incredulous at an exhibition of the Holy Grail; credulous about the authorship of Shakespeare's plays; relaxing in Bermuda; observing (and investing in) new technologies. The Autobiography's "Closing Words" movingly commemorate his daughter Jean, who died on Christmas Eve 1909. Also included in this volume is the previously unpublished "Ashcroft-Lyon Manuscript," Mark Twain's caustic indictment of his "putrescent pair" of secretaries and the havoc that erupted in his house during their residency.



Fitfully published in fragments at intervals throughout the twentieth century, Autobiography of Mark Twain has now been critically reconstructed and made available as it was intended to be read. Fully annotated by the editors of the Mark Twain Project, the complete Autobiography emerges as a landmark publication in American literature.





Editors: Benjamin Griffin and Harriet Elinor Smith

Associate Editors: Victor Fischer, Michael B. Frank, Amanda Gagel, Sharon K. Goetz, Leslie Diane Myrick, Christopher M. Ohge

The Tragedy of Pudd'Nhead Wilson

by Mark Twain

Two half brothers look so similar as infants that no one can tell them apart. One, the legitimate son of a rich man, is destined for a life of comfort, while the other is condemned to be a slave as he is part black. The mother of the would be slave is also the nurse of the other; to give her son the best life possible she switches the two. Soon the boy who is given every advantage becomes spoiled and cruel. He takes sadistic pleasure in tormenting his half brother. As they grow older, the townspeople no longer notice that the boys look similar, and they readily accept that each is born to his station.

Pudd'nhead Wilson Those Extraordinary Twins ; The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg

by Mark Twain

Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894), written in a more sombre vein than his other Mississippi writings, was Mark Twain's last serious work of fiction. It reveals the sinister forces that, towards the end of his life, Twain thought to be threatening the American dream. The central plot revolves around the tragedy of "Roxy," a mulatto slave whose attempt to save her son from his fate succeeds only in destroying him. An astringent work which raises the serious issue of racial difference, Pudd'nhead Wilson is considered by the critic F.R. Leavis to be "a classic of the use of popular modes--the sensational and the melodramatic." The volume also includes two other late works by Twain, Those Extraordinary Twins and The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg.