Mark Twain

Titles in Fiction category:

• Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, A    

  The ungentle laws and customs touched upon in this tale are historical, and the episodes which are used to illustrate them are also historical. It is not pretended that these laws and customs existed in England in the sixth century; no, it is only pretended that inasmuch as they existed in the ...

• Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of    

  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. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybo ...

• Letters From The Earth    

  The Creator sat upon the throne, thinking. Behind him stretched the illimitable continent of heaven, steeped in a glory of light and color; before him rose the black night of Space, like a wall. His mighty bulk towered rugged and mountain-like into the zenith, and His divine head blazed there l ...

• Mysterious Stranger, The    

  It was in 1590--winter. Austria was far away from the world, and asleep; it was still the Middle Ages in Austria, and promised to remain so forever. Some even set it away back centuries upon centuries and said that by the mental and spiritual clock it was still the Age of Belief in Austria. ...

• Prince and the Pauper, The    

  In the ancient city of London, on a certain autumn day in the second quarter of the sixteenth century, a boy was born to a poor family of the name of Canty, who did not want him. On the same day another English child was born to a rich family of the name of Tudor, who did want him. All Englan ...

Titles in Non-Fiction category:

• Christian Science    

  BOOK I of this volume occupies a quarter or a third of the volume, and consists of matter written about four years ago, but not hitherto published in book form. It contained errors of judgment and of fact. I have now corrected these to the best of my ability and later knowledge.

• Life on the Mississippi    

  But the basin of the Mississippi is the body of the nation. All the other parts are but members, important in themselves, yet more important in their relations to this. Exclusive of the Lake basin and of 300,000 square miles in Texas and New Mexico, which in many aspects form a pa ...

• Roughing It    

  This book is merely a personal narrative, and not a pretentious history or a philosophical dissertation. It is a record of several years of variegated vagabondizing, and its object is rather to help the resting reader while away an idle hour than afflict him with metaphysics, or goad him with s ...

Titles in Short Stories category:

• $30,000 Bequest, The    

  Chapter I

• About Play-Acting

  I

• At the Appetite-Cure

  This establishment's name is Hochberghaus. It is in Bohemia, a short day's journey from Vienna, and being in the Austrian Empire is of course a health resort. The empire is made up of health resorts; it distributes health to the whole world. Its waters are all medicinal. They are bottled an ...

• Burlesque Biography, A

  Two or three persons having at different times intimated that if I would write an autobiography they would read it when they got leisure, I yield at last to this frenzied public demand and herewith tender my history.

• Californian's Tale, The

  Thirty-five years ago I was out prospecting on the Stanislaus, tramping all day long with pick and pan and horn, and washing a hatful of dirt here and there, always expecting to make a rich strike, and never doing it. It was a lovely reason, woodsy, balmy, delicious, and had once been populous ...

• Captain's Story, The

  There was a good deal of pleasant gossip about old Captain 'Hurricane' Jones, of the Pacific Ocean--peace to his ashes! Two or three of us present had known him; I, particularly well, for I had made four sea-voyages with him. He was a very remarkable man. He was born on a ship; he picked up ...

• Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, The

  In compliance with the request of a friend of mine, who wrote me from the East, I called on good-natured, garrulous old Simon Wheeler, and inquired after my friend's friend, Leonidas W. Smiley, as requested to do, and I hereunto append the result. I have a lurking suspicion that Leonid ...

• Concerning the Jews

  Some months ago I published a magazine article[1] descriptive of a remarkable scene in the Imperial Parliament in Vienna. Since then I have received from Jews in America several letters of inquiry. They were difficult letters to answer, for they were not very definite. But at last I have rec ...

• Diplomatic Pay and Clothes

  VIENNA, January 5--I find in this morning's papers the statement that the Government of the United States has paid to the two members of the Peace Commission entitled to receive money for their services 100,000 dollars each for their six weeks' work in Paris.

• Dog's Tale, A    

  My father was a St. Bernard, my mother was a collie, but I am a Presbyterian. This is what my mother told me, I do not know these nice distinctions myself. To me they are only fine large words meaning nothing. My mother had a fondness for such; she liked to say them, and see other dogs look s ...

• Edward Mills and George Benton: A Tale

  These two were distantly related to each other--seventh cousins, or something of that sort. While still babies they became orphans, and were adopted by the Brants, a childless couple, who quickly grew very fond of them. The Brants were always saying: "Be pure, honest, sober, industrious, and ...

• Esquimaux Maiden's Romance, The

  'Yes, I will tell you anything about my life that you would like to know, Mr. Twain,' she said, in her soft voice, and letting her honest eyes rest placidly upon my face, 'for it is kind and good of you to like me and care to know about me.'

• First Writing-machines, The

  From My Unpublished Autobiography

• Five Boons of Life, The

  Chapter I

• From the 'London Times' of 1904

  Correspondence of the 'London Times'
  Chicago, April 1, 1904

• Helpless Situation, A

  Once or twice a year I get a letter of a certain pattern, a pattern that never materially changes, in form and substance, yet I cannot get used to that letter--it always astonishes me. It affects me as the locomotive always affects me: I saw to myself, "I have seen you a thousand times, you a ...

• Is He Living or is He Dead?

  I was spending the month of March 1892 at Mentone, in the Riviera. At this retired spot one has all the advantages, privately, which are to be had publicly at Monte Carlo and Nice, a few miles farther along. That is to say, one has the flooding sunshine, the balmy air and the brilliant blue s ...

• Italian with Grammar

  I found that a person of large intelligence could read this beautiful language with considerable facility without a dictionary, but I presently found that to such a parson a grammar could be of use at times. It is because, if he does not know the were's and the was's and the m ...

• Italian without a Master

  It is almost a fortnight now that I am domiciled in a medieval villa in the country, a mile or two from Florence. I cannot speak the language; I am too old not to learn how, also too busy when I am busy, and too indolent when I am not; wherefore some will imagine that I am having a dull time o ...

• Luck

  [NOTE.--This is not a fancy sketch. I got it from a clergyman who was an instructor at Woolwich forty years ago, and who vouched for its truth. --M.T.]

• Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg, The

  It was many years ago. Hadleyburg was the most honest and upright town in all the region round about. It had kept that reputation unsmirched during three generations, and was prouder of it than of any other of its possessions. It was so proud of it, and so anxious to insure its perpetuation, ...

• My Debut as a Literary Person

  In those early days I had already published one little thing ('The Jumping Frog') in an Eastern paper, but I did not consider that that counted. In my view, a person who published things in a mere newspaper could not properly claim recognition as a Literary Person: he must rise away above that ...

• My First Lie, and How I Got Out of It

  As I understand it, what you desire is information about 'my first lie, and how I got out of it.' I was born in 1835; I am well along, and my memory is not as good as it was. If you had asked about my first truth it would have been easier for me and kinder of you, for I remember that fairly w ...

• Telephonic Conversation, A

  Consider that a conversation by telephone--when you are simply siting by and not taking any part in that conversation--is one of the solemnest curiosities of modern life. Yesterday I was writing a deep article on a sublime philosophical subject while such a conversation was going on in the roo ...

• Travelling with a Reformer

  Last spring I went out to Chicago to see the Fair, and although I did not see it my trip was not wholly lost--there were compensations. In New York I was introduced to a Major in the regular army who said he was going to the Fair, and we agreed to go together. I had to go to Boston first, but ...

• Was it Heaven? Or Hell?

  Chapter I

Huckleberry Finn (1884) was first considered adult fiction. Huck Finn, which painted a picture of Mississippi frontier life, was intended as a sequel to Tom Sawyer. Huck, who could not possibly write a story, tells us the story. Both works stand high on the list of eminent writers like Stevenson, Dickens, and Saroyan who honestly depicted young people without any condescension or moralizing. Huck's distaste for civilization reflects the ideas of Walden, and his debate whether or not he will turn in Jim, an escaped slave and a friend, probed the racial tensions of the national conscience. Later Twain wrote in The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg (1900): "I have no race prejudices... All that I care to know is that a man is a human being - that is enough for me; he can't be any worse."

One of Twain's major achievements is the way he narrates Huckleberry Finn, following the twists and turns of ordinary speech, his native Missouri dialect. Shelley Fisher Fishkin has noted in Was Huck Black? (1993) that the book drew upon a vernacular formed by black voices as well as white. The model for Huck Finn's voice, according to Fishkin, was a black child instead of a white one. Huck, himself, was drawn a boy named Tom Blankenship.

'"Who is your folks?" he questions me.
"The Phelpses, down yonder."
"Oh," he says, "how'd you say he got shot?"
"He had a dream," I says, "and it shot him."
"Funny dream," the doctor says.'
(from Huckleberry Finn)

In the 1890s Twain lost most of his earnings in financial speculations and in the downhill of his own publishing firm. Twain closed Hartford house, and to recover from the bankrupt, he started a world lecture tour, during which Susy, his favorite daughter, died of meningitis. Twain toured New Zealand, Australia, India, and South Africa, and returned to the U.S. in 1900. He wrote such books as The Tragedy of Pudd'head Wilson (1884), a murder mystery and a case of transposed identities, but also an implicit condemnation of a society that allows slavery, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (1885), and the travel book Following the Equator (1897). In 1902 Twain made a trip to Hannibal, his home town which had inspired several of his works. His plans for a peaceful and quiet visit were ruined when more than 100 newspapers chronicled his every move.

The death of his wife in 1904 in Florence and his second daughter darkened the author's later years, which is also seen in writings and his posthumously published autobiography (1924). Twain died on April 21, 1910. He dictated his autobiography during his last years to his secretary A.B. Paine, and various versions of it have been published. In 1916 appeared The Mysterious Stranger, set in the 16th-century Austria, in which Satan reveals the hypocrisies and stupidities of the village of Eseldorf. "The first man was a hypocrite and a coward, qualities which have not yet failed in his line; it is the foundation upon which all civilizations have been built." The work was composed between 1897 and 1908 in several, quite different versions, one of which was set in Hannibal, another in a print shop. Albert Bigelow Paine, Mark Twain's authorized biographer apparently added to it a concluding chapter from another version altogether - hence creating contradictions and inconsistencies.

"If men neglected 'God's poor' and 'God's stricken and helpless ones' as He does, what would become of them? The answer is to be found in those dark lands where man follows His example and turns his indifference back upon them: they get no help at all; they cry, and plead and pray in vain, they linger and suffer, and miserably die." (from 'Thoughts of God')

During his long writing career, Twain produced a considerable number of essays. His essays appeared in various newspapers and in magazines, including the Galaxy, Harper's, the Atlantic Monthly, and North American Review. In his "Sandwich Islands" letters (1873) Twain described how the missionaries and American government have corrupted the Hawaiians, "Queen Victoria's Jubilee" (1897) presented the pomp and pageantry of an English royal procession, and "King Leopold's Soliloquy" (1905) revealed in a dramatic monologue the political evils caused by despotism. Twain's finest satire of imperialism was perhaps "To the Person Sitting in Darkness" (1901), in which the author wrote that the people in darkness are beginning to see "more light than... was profitable for us."

Author biographies courtesy of Author's Calendar. Used with permission.