This delightful collection of lesser-known gems by Mark Twain begins with the story of a town called Hadleyburg, which prides itself on the honesty of its citizens. One day a citizen of Hadleyburg offends a stranger passing through, who vows to take his revenge by revealing just how corruptible the sanctimonious town really is. Twain is at his best here, poking fun at common hypocrisy as the self-satisfied pillars of the community are done in by their own greed.
Other stories in the collection include: “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” “The One Million Pound Bank Note,” “Edward Mills and George Benton: A Tale,” “The Stolen White Elephant,” “Cannibalism in the Cars,” “The Man Who Put Up at Gadsby’s,” “The Story of the Good Little Boy,” “The Story of the Bad Little Boy,” “Baker’s Blue Jay Yarn: What Stumped the Blue Jays,” and “A Double Barreled Detective Story.”
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"This collection of short stories shows a different side of Mark Twain. Works such as these from later in his life have a cynicism that is not so prevalent in his earlier writing. Still, Twain's typical wit and twists of plot kept me laughing throughout. "
— Susan (4 out of 5 stars)
" This collection of short stories shows a different side of Mark Twain. Works such as these from later in his life have a cynicism that is not so prevalent in his earlier writing. Still, Twain's typical wit and twists of plot kept me laughing throughout. "
— Susan, 1/6/2010" Mark Twain's stories in this book are interesting and clever, but for some reason it still took me quite a while to get around to finishing the book. Other books, it seems, were more interesting, so this one kept getting pre-empted. "
— Camille, 1/17/2008" Mark Twain's stories in this book are interesting and clever, but for some reason it still took me quite a while to get around to finishing the book. Other books, it seems, were more interesting, so this one kept getting pre-empted. "
— Camille, 1/17/2008Mark 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.