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Tales, Speeches, Essays, and Sketches

Author Mark Twain
Introduction by Tom Quirk
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Paperback
$24.00 US
Penguin Adult HC/TR | Penguin Classics
On sale Sep 01, 1994 | 448 Pages | 9780140434170
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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.
Tales, Speeches, Essays, And SketchesIntroduction

Suggestions For Further Reading

A Note On The Texts

Tales, Speeches, Essays, And Sketches


Letter from Carson City (1863)
Washoe.—"Information Wanted" (1864)
Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog (1865)
The Christmas Fireside: The Story of the Bad Little Boy That Bore a Charmed Life (1865)
Barnum's First Speech in Congress (1867)
Cannibalism in the Cars (1868)
An Awful—Terrible Medieval Romance (1870)
The Tomb of Adam from The Innocents Abroad (1869)
Story of the Good Little Boy Who Did Not Prosper (1870)
Map of Paris (1870)
Buck Fanshawe's Funeral from Roughing It (1872)
The Story of the Old Ram from Roughing It (1872)
Life as I Find It (1873)
Sociable Jimmy (1874)
A True Story, Repeated Word for Word as I Heard It (1874)
An Encounter with an Interviewer (1874)
from Old Times on the Mississippi (1875)
The Boys' Ambition
I Want to Be a Cub-Pilot
Perplexing Lessons
Continued Perplexities
The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut (1876)
[Date, 1601] Conversation, as It Was by the Social Fireside, in the Time of the Tudors (1876)
Whittier Birthday Speech (1877)
A Presidential Candidate (1879)
The Babies, As They Comfort Us in Our Sorrows, Let Us Not Forget Them in Our Festivities (1879)
A Cat Tale (ca. 1880)
Jim Baker's Blue Jay Yarn from A Tramp Abroad (1880)
The Private History of a Campaign That Failed (1885)
Private History of the "Jumping Frog" Story (1894)
Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar from Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894)
Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar from Following the Equator (1897)
The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg (1899)
My First Lie and How I Got Out of It (1899)
To the Person Sitting in Darkness (1901)
Corn-Pone Opinions (1901)
A Dog's Tale (1903)
Eve Speaks (ca. 1905)
Seventieth Birthday Speech (1905)
Early Days (1907)
Little Bessie (ca. 1908-09)
"The Turning Point of My Life" (1910)
The Death of Jean (1911)

On Writing And Writers
Reply to the Editor of "The Art of Authorship" (1890)
What Paul Bourget Thinks of Us (1895)
Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences (1895)
How to Tell a Story (1895)
William Dean Howells (1906)
My Literary Shipyard (1922)

MARK TWAIN, considered one of the greatest writers in American literature, was born Samuel Clemens in Florida, Missouri, in 1835, and died in Redding, Connecticut in 1910. As a young child, he moved with his family to Hannibal, Missouri, on the banks of the Mississippi River, a setting that inspired his two best-known novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In his person and in his pursuits, he was a man of extraordinary contrasts. Although he left school at 12 when his father died, he was eventually awarded honorary degrees from Yale University, the University of Missouri, and Oxford University. His career encompassed such varied occupations as printer, Mississippi riverboat pilot, journalist, travel writer, and publisher. He made fortunes from his writing but toward the end of his life he had to resort to lecture tours to pay his debts. He was hot-tempered, profane, and sentimental—and also pessimistic, cynical, and tortured by self-doubt. His nostalgia for the past helped produce some of his best books. He lives in American letters as a great artist, described by writer William Dean Howells as “the Lincoln of our literature.” Twain and his wife, Olivia Langdon Clemens, had four children—a son, Langdon, who died as an infant, and three daughters, Susy, Clara, and Jean. View titles by Mark Twain

About

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.

Table of Contents

Tales, Speeches, Essays, And SketchesIntroduction

Suggestions For Further Reading

A Note On The Texts

Tales, Speeches, Essays, And Sketches


Letter from Carson City (1863)
Washoe.—"Information Wanted" (1864)
Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog (1865)
The Christmas Fireside: The Story of the Bad Little Boy That Bore a Charmed Life (1865)
Barnum's First Speech in Congress (1867)
Cannibalism in the Cars (1868)
An Awful—Terrible Medieval Romance (1870)
The Tomb of Adam from The Innocents Abroad (1869)
Story of the Good Little Boy Who Did Not Prosper (1870)
Map of Paris (1870)
Buck Fanshawe's Funeral from Roughing It (1872)
The Story of the Old Ram from Roughing It (1872)
Life as I Find It (1873)
Sociable Jimmy (1874)
A True Story, Repeated Word for Word as I Heard It (1874)
An Encounter with an Interviewer (1874)
from Old Times on the Mississippi (1875)
The Boys' Ambition
I Want to Be a Cub-Pilot
Perplexing Lessons
Continued Perplexities
The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut (1876)
[Date, 1601] Conversation, as It Was by the Social Fireside, in the Time of the Tudors (1876)
Whittier Birthday Speech (1877)
A Presidential Candidate (1879)
The Babies, As They Comfort Us in Our Sorrows, Let Us Not Forget Them in Our Festivities (1879)
A Cat Tale (ca. 1880)
Jim Baker's Blue Jay Yarn from A Tramp Abroad (1880)
The Private History of a Campaign That Failed (1885)
Private History of the "Jumping Frog" Story (1894)
Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar from Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894)
Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar from Following the Equator (1897)
The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg (1899)
My First Lie and How I Got Out of It (1899)
To the Person Sitting in Darkness (1901)
Corn-Pone Opinions (1901)
A Dog's Tale (1903)
Eve Speaks (ca. 1905)
Seventieth Birthday Speech (1905)
Early Days (1907)
Little Bessie (ca. 1908-09)
"The Turning Point of My Life" (1910)
The Death of Jean (1911)

On Writing And Writers
Reply to the Editor of "The Art of Authorship" (1890)
What Paul Bourget Thinks of Us (1895)
Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences (1895)
How to Tell a Story (1895)
William Dean Howells (1906)
My Literary Shipyard (1922)

Author

MARK TWAIN, considered one of the greatest writers in American literature, was born Samuel Clemens in Florida, Missouri, in 1835, and died in Redding, Connecticut in 1910. As a young child, he moved with his family to Hannibal, Missouri, on the banks of the Mississippi River, a setting that inspired his two best-known novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In his person and in his pursuits, he was a man of extraordinary contrasts. Although he left school at 12 when his father died, he was eventually awarded honorary degrees from Yale University, the University of Missouri, and Oxford University. His career encompassed such varied occupations as printer, Mississippi riverboat pilot, journalist, travel writer, and publisher. He made fortunes from his writing but toward the end of his life he had to resort to lecture tours to pay his debts. He was hot-tempered, profane, and sentimental—and also pessimistic, cynical, and tortured by self-doubt. His nostalgia for the past helped produce some of his best books. He lives in American letters as a great artist, described by writer William Dean Howells as “the Lincoln of our literature.” Twain and his wife, Olivia Langdon Clemens, had four children—a son, Langdon, who died as an infant, and three daughters, Susy, Clara, and Jean. View titles by Mark Twain

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