Publisher Description
Mark Twain, America’s acknowledged greatest writer of
fiction, was a master of writing short stories as well as novels. Twain
influence almost every subsequent American writer from Hemingway and
Fitzgerald, to Cather and Robert Frost.
These are four of his best short stories, starting with his
most famous, “The Notorious Frog,” and including three of his other favorites: “A
True Story,” “Niagara,” and “The White Elephant.” For students this is a
wonderful lead into Twain’s great novels, Huckleberry
Finn, Tom Sawyer, and the
brilliant but often overlooked Puddenhead
Wilson.
Bill DeWees, our professional narrator, has just the right
American voice for these great American stories.
Download and start listening now!
About Mark Twain
Mark Twain, pseudonym of Samuel L. Clemens (1835–1910), was born in Florida, Missouri, and grew up in Hannibal on the west bank of the Mississippi River. He attended school briefly and then at age thirteen became a full-time apprentice to a local printer. When his older brother Orion established the Hannibal Journal, Samuel became a compositor for that paper and then, for a time, an itinerant printer. With a commission to write comic travel letters, he traveled down the Mississippi. Smitten with the riverboat life, he signed on as an apprentice to a steamboat pilot. After 1859, he became a licensed pilot, but two years later the Civil War put an end to the steam-boat traffic.
In 1861, he and his brother traveled to the Nevada Territory where Samuel became a writer for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, and there, on February 3, 1863, he signed a humorous account with the pseudonym Mark Twain. The name was a river man’s term for water “two fathoms deep” and thus just barely safe for navigation.
In 1870 Twain married and moved with his wife to Hartford, Connecticut. He became a highly successful lecturer in the United States and England, and he continued to write.
About Bill DeWees
Bill DeWees is a voice actor who has worked extensively in radio, commercials, and audiobook narration. Some of his clients include Lowe’s, Pizza Hut, Whole Foods, and Whirlpool. Among his audiobook narrations are What Makes an Effective Executive by Peter F. Drucker, The Jefferson Lies by David Barton, and Cold-Case Christianity by James Warren Wallace.