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.
A Southern town scandalized by the murder of its most prominent citizen uncovers a mystery even more shocking in this ironic suspense story from a great American master Afraid for her infant son's ...life, a slave switches the boy with her master's child. A young New York lawyer fascinated by palmistry and fingerprint analysis moves below the Mason–Dixon line, makes a bad joke, and is immediately and forever branded a "pudd'nhead." Two Italian noblemen pay a visit to Dawson's Landing, Missouri, and become prime suspects in the murder of a local judge. From these disparate plot strands, Mark Twain fashions a humorous and entertaining tale with all the elements of the traditional murder mystery: a case of mistaken identity, a gruesome crime, a sinister villain, an eccentric detective, a climactic courtroom showdown, and an ingenious solution. But beneath this potboiler's pomp and circumstance lurks a clear-eyed and savagely compelling indictment of slavery and its poisonous effects on American society. Twain's last novel set in the antebellum South, Pudd'nhead Wilson offers his clearest and most provocative condemnation of racial prejudice. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.
Mark Twain's historical fable explores what happens when the Prince of Wales changes places with a young beggar
Set in sixteenth-century England,The Prince and the Pauperfollows two boys with vastly ...different lives: Tom Canty, the indigent child of an abusive, roustabout thief, and Prince Edward, the son of King Henry VIII and heir to the throne. One day, daydreaming while wandering near the king's palace, Canty catches sight of the prince-and nearly catches a brutal beating from the royal guards. Prince Edward commands them to stop and invites the street urchin into his immaculate home. Both fascinated by their strikingly similar appearances, the two boys craft a plot that could unwittingly upend the monarchy: to temporarily switch clothes, thereby swapping lives. Through first-hand experience-and a series of humorous follies-the two discover that neither life is as carefree as they expected. InThe Prince and the Pauper, Twain elevates the classic theme of mistaken identity with his inimitable storytelling to create something uniquely American: a historical fable. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.
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 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.
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