Mark Twain
Author
Appears on these lists
Banned Books That Shaped America
Coming of Age Stories for Teens
More Banned Children's Book Favorites
Coming of Age Stories for Teens
More Banned Children's Book Favorites
Description
Desperate to escape his abusive father and the constraints of the civilized life, young Huck Finn fakes his death and, with the help of his slave friend Jim, embarks on a vagabond life rafting down the Mississippi River. Yet life is anything but carefree for Huck and Jim. Their travels bring them into contact with scores of rogues, rascals, ruffians, hucksters, and law-abiding citizens who would as soon seen Jim returned to his owners and Huck to...
Author
Description
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...
Author
Appears on list
Description
"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
...Author
Description
Pudd'nhead Wilson begins with a young slave woman taking her light-skinned child -- fearing for his life -- and exchanging him with her master's child. Like much of Twain, the tale becomes an indictment of racial prejudice in the antebellum south, full of Twain's gentle yet sharp-elbowed humor.
Author
Formats
Description
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...
Every one of his sixty stories is here: ranging from the frontier humor of “The Celebrated...
11) Roughing it
Author
Formats
Description
Two American originals, Mark Twain and the West, come together in this documentary of the author's seven-year "pleasure trip" to the silver mines of Nevada. Twain had originally planned the trip to be a three-month "vacation;" not surprisingly for someone of Twain's temperament, the trip lasted seven years. His journey, like his book, has a way of taking ever-unexpected turns.
Author
Description
This long essay is a work of mock philology, one of several appendices to Twain's travel novel, A Tramp Abroad. In it, Twain explains, complains about, and shows how one might improve upon various aspects of the German language. His examples of precisely how the German language is awful include the famed "separable verb" – which allows one to put the first part of a given verb at the beginning – and its second part at the end – of a given clause...
Author
Description
The town of Hadleyburg had the reputation of being the most honest town in a wide area, indeed an incorruptible community. The elders took this reputation so to heart that they brought up their children shielded from all temptation and trained thoroughly in total honesty. However, a stranger passing through the community was seriously offended by the actions of residents of this Utopia, and he vowed to gain revenge. After several years he came up...
Author
Formats
Description
The Mysterious Stranger, Mark Twain's fantastical last novelette, 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...
Author
Formats
Description
In these extraordinary stories Mark Twain takes us from the sleepy banks of the Mississippi, through frontier towns, and across the deserted gold plains of California. We encounter his countryfolk in all their bizarre variety: a cannibalistic ex-senator, a compulsive gambler, phoney travelling salesmen, and a team of bumbling detectives.
The breadth, skill, and comic ingenuity of these tales remind us why Mark Twain is truly the 'father of...
The breadth, skill, and comic ingenuity of these tales remind us why Mark Twain is truly the 'father of...
Author
Formats
Description
Following the Equator is an account by Mark Twain of his travels through the British Empire in 1895. He chose his route for opportunities to lecture on the English language and recoup his finances, impoverished due to a failed investment. He recounts and criticizes the racism, imperialism and missionary zeal he encountered on his travels - and all with his particular brand of wit.
Author
Formats
Description
The short story is often viewed as an inferior relation to the Novel. But it is an art in itself. To take a story and distil its essence into fewer pages while keeping character and plot rounded and driven is not an easy task. Many try and many fail. In this series we look at short stories from many of our most accomplished writers. Miniature masterpieces with a lot to say. In this volume we examine some of the short stories of Mark Twain. Samuel
...Author
Formats
Description
"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...
Author
Formats
Description
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...
The eagerly-awaited Volume 2 delves...
Author
Description
The first major collection of Mark Twain's antiwar writings, including six previously unpublished essays. Although not a pacifist, Twain was the most prominent opponent of the Philippine-American War and served as vice president of the Anti-Imperial League from 1901 to 1910. His essays, stories, and commentaries on the war are now offered in one volume.
Search Tools Get RSS Feed Email this Search