Publisher Description
Ten superbly narrated stories that help explain America by America's best writers. Irving's incredible and amusing tale of the archetypal Rip Van Winkle relates the story of a man who slept through history. Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage tells of a young soldier who must struggle with his conscience no matter what the consequences. The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County is Mark Twain's hilarious story of a contest to end all contests in the rowdy days of the Forty-Niners. Edgar Allan Poe's The Man of the Crowd tells of one man's strange fascination with another. The Ransom of Red Chief is another of O. Henry's tales of a kidnapping that goes horribly, horribly, wrong. Miss Tempy's Watchers, by Sarah Orne Jewett, speaks of the power of friendship. Kate Chopin's lovely Desiree's Baby tells the poignant story of one woman's search for her past. Jack London's acclaimed The Call of the Wild is a thrilling adventure of nature and survival. Edith Wharton pens a chilling ghost story in the atmospheric The Eyes. And Bernice Bobs Her Hair is F. Scott Fitzgerald's wry and amusing tale of a young lady's struggle for social success.
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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.