LITMIR.BIZ

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of these selections (eight of them fiction and three of them autobiographical) were never completed, and all were left unpublished.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.

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"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, <i>The Prince and the Pauper,</i> 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. <br /><br />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.

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This is the <i>only</i> 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.

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Mark Twain's humorous account of his six years in Nevada, San Francisco, and the Sandwich Islands is a patchwork of personal anecdotes and tall tales, many of them told in the «vigorous new vernacular» of the West. Selling seventy five thousand copies within a year of its publication in 1872, <I>Roughing It </I>was greeted as a work of «wild, preposterous invention and sublime exaggeration» whose satiric humor made «pretension and false dignity ridiculous.» Meticulously restored from a variety of original sources, the text is the first to adhere to the author's wishes in thousands of details of wording, spelling, and punctuation, and includes all of the 304 first-edition illustrations. With its comprehensive and illuminating notes and supplementary materials, which include detailed maps tracing Mark Twain's western travels, this Mark Twain Library <I>Roughing It </I>must be considered the standard edition for readers and students of Mark Twain.

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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.

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"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. <br /><br />Editors: <br /><br />Harriet E. Smith, Benjamin Griffin, Victor Fischer, Michael B. Frank, Sharon K. Goetz, Leslie Myrick

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One of Twains Greatest! : This book–at times disjointed, rambling, self-referential, and irreverent–is decades ahead of its time. Its an interdisciplinarians dream as Twain takes on economics, geography, politics, ancient and contemporary history, and folklore with equal ease. Mostly though, one appreciates his knack for exaggeration, the tall tale, and the outright lie. Its a triumph of tone, as he lets you in on his wild wit, his keen observation, and his penchant for bending the truth without losing his credibility as a guide. <p> The books structure is also modern: He recounts his days as a paddlewheel steam boat cub, piloting the hundreds of miles of the Mississippi before the Civil War, then, in Part 2, returns to retrace his paddleboat route. Although a few of his many digressions dont work (they sometimes sound formulaic or too detailed) most of the narrative is extremely entertaining. Twain seems caught between admiration and disdain for the modern age-but he also rejects over-sentimentality over the past. <p> He writes with beauty and cynicism, verve and humor. Very highly recommended!

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Written at the end of Twain's career, Extracts from Adam's Diary was first published in 1897. Twain's Adam was based on himself.

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The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain is an 1876 novel about a young boy growing up along the Mississippi River. It is set in the 1840s in the fictional town of St. Petersburg, inspired by Hannibal, Missouri, where Twain lived as a boy. In the novel Tom Sawyer has several adventures, often with his friend, Huckleberry Finn. Originally a commercial failure, the book ended up being the best selling of any of Twain's works during his lifetime. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is overshadowed by its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the book is considered a masterpiece of American literature, and was one of the first novels to be written on a typewriter. Among the most significant works by Mark Twain: «On the Decay of the Art of Lying», «The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today», «The Prince and the Pauper», «A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court», «The American Claimant», «Pudd'nhead Wilson», «Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc», «A Horse's Tale», «The Mysterious Stranger», «The Adventures of Tom Sawyer», «Adventures of Huckleberry Finn», «Tom Sawyer Abroad», «Tom Sawyer, Detective», «Schoolhouse Hill», «The Mysterious Stranger», «Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer among the Indians», «Huck Finn», «Tom Sawyer’s Conspiracy», «Tom Sawyer’s Gang Plans a Naval Battle».

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Nowadays The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the most famous and popular novel by an American writer Mark Twain (his real name is Samuel Langhorne Clemens). Huckleberry Finn is a teenager who runs away from his alcoholic father that was constantly beating him. On the way, an escaped black slave Jim, whose master was going to sell him to more cruel owners, joins him. Huck and Jim sail down the Mississippi River to Cairo in Illinois where slavery is abolished. The book is famous for its picturesque descriptions of people and towns along the Mississippi River. The actions happen before the Civil War in the south society that disappeared approximately 20 years before the publication of the novel. It is full of a satire on ingrained prejudices, racism in particular.

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