Mark Twain

The book that made Mark Twain famous and introduced the world to that obnoxious and ubiquitous character: the American tourist Based on a series of letters first published in American newspapers, The Innocents Abroad is Mark Twain's hilarious and insightful account of an organized tour of Europe and the Holy Land undertaken in 1867.   With his trademark blend of skepticism and sincerity, Twain casts New World eyes on the people and places of the...

Tom Sawyer Detective is a novel by Mark Twain. It is a sequel to Tom Sawyer (1876) and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), and a prequel to Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894). Tom Sawyer attempts to solve a mysterious murder in this burlesque of the immensely popular detective novels of the time. Like Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the story is told using the first-person narrative voice of Huck Finn. In 1909, Danish schoolmaster Valdemar Thoresen claimed,...

Lo que se dice de Tom Sawyer podría decirse de cualquier chico en cualquier lugar: curioso, travieso y siempre en busca de diversión. Algunos aseguran que Mark Twain se propuso recrear una parte de su niñez en un poblado a orillas del Misisipi, zona de confluencia de razas y supersticiones, y lo logró con el poder de su imaginación y de su escritura, asegurando para siempre el gusto en los lectores. La historia cuenta cómo Tom y sus amigos Huck...

These acerbic, poignant, and thought-provoking essays concern mankind, its relationship with God, and how the mind works. Twain himself considered them dark and cynical, delaying their publication for many years before finally releasing them as an anonymous, limited-edition collection. The title essay constitutes a deeply felt blow against religious hypocrisy, written in the form of a Socratic dialogue between a young idealist and an elderly, world-weary...

The Satirical and Bitter Side of Mark Twain. "Man is made of dirt, I saw him made. I am not made of dirt. Man is a museum of diseases, a home of impurities, he comes today and is gone tomorrow, he begins as dirt and departs as stench. I am of the aristocracy of the Imperishables. And man has the Moral Sense. You understand? He has the Moral Sense. That would seem to be difference enough between us, all by itself." The Mysterious Stranger and Other...

"The Diaries and Adam and Eve" by Mark Twain was originally published as two separate stories and were later combined at Twain's request. "Extracts from Adam's Diary" was published as a stand-alone book in 1904. In 1905, "Eve's Diary" was published in the Christmas issue of "Harper's Bazaar" and then as a book in 1906. With his signature wit and charm, Twain tells the separate stories of humanity's biblical ancestors from the perspective of each in...

Excerpt: ""Moral Statistician."-I don't want any of your statistics; I took your whole batch and lit my pipe with it. I hate your kind of people. You are always ciphering out how much a man's health is injured, and how much his intellect is impaired, and how many pitiful dollars and cents he wastes in the course of ninety-two years' indulgence in the fatal practice of smoking; and in the equally fatal practice of drinking coffee; and in playing billiards...

In this representative volume, "The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories" the reader will find twenty-four of Mark Twain's best shorter works. Classic and unforgettable tales that span the author's career are included, such as "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", which is Twain's most famous short story and was his first great success as an author. It is the unforgettable tale of Jim Smiley, the gambler who will bet on anything including...

Christian Science is Mark Twain's razor-sharp attack on a popular movement which was sweeping the country at the turn of the 20th century. One of the tenets of Christian Science is the healing of physical illness through prayer. Having recently lost a daughter to meningitis, Twain responded angrily to the notion that pain and sickness were easily surmounted. His deep-seated iconoclasm also caused him to take aim at Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of...

Mark Twain crea una bella ficción en la que, por un exacto y casual parecido físico, un futuro rey conoce amargamente la situación desdichada de su pueblo, mientras que el hijo de una familia pobre y miserable vive la angustiosa estrechez del protocolo real. El marco histórico es el reino de Inglaterra del siglo XVI, y la figura del príncipe corresponde en la realidad a Eduardo VI. Hijo de Enrique VIII y de Juana Seymour, Eduardo VI reinó por...