Tom Sawyer, Detective

Tom Sawyer, Detective is an 1896 novel by Mark Twain. It is a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), and 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 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the story is told using the first-person narrative voice of Huck Finn.

Tom Sawyer Abroad

Tom Sawyer Abroad is a novel by Mark Twain published in 1894. It features Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn in a parody of adventure stories like those of Jules Verne.

 

A Horse's Tale

A Horse's Tale is a fictional novel written by American author Mark Twain, written partially in the voice of Soldier Boy, who is Buffalo Bill's favorite horse, at a fictional frontier outpost within the U.S. 7th Cavalry. Harper's Magazine originally published the story in two installments in August and September 1906. Clemens wrote the story after receiving a request from actress Minnie Maddern Fiske to assist in her drive against bullfighting. Harper's published the story as a 153-page book in October 1907.

     Clemens's daughter Susy Clemens, who died in 1896 at age twenty-four of spinal meningitis, is understood to be the inspiration for the lead character "Cathy Alison." When Clemens provided the story to Harper's, he included a photograph of Susy for the illustrator to use for "Cathy."

Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc

Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, by the Sieur Louis de Conte (full title) is an 1896 novel by Mark Twain which recounts the life of Joan of Arc.

     The novel is presented as a translation by "Jean Francois Alden" of memoirs by Louis de Conte, a fictionalized version of Joan of Arc's page, Louis de Contes. The novel is divided into three sections according to Joan of Arc's development: a youth in Domrémy, a commander of the army of King Charles VII of France, and a defendant at trial in Rouen.

   The novel was first published as a serialization in Harper's Magazine beginning in April 1895. Twain was aware of his reputation as a comic writer and he asked each installment appear anonymously so readers would treat it seriously. Regardless, his authorship soon became known, and Harper and Brothers published the book edition with his name in May 1896.

The American Claimant

The American Claimant is an 1892 novel by Mark Twain. Twain wrote the novel with the help of phonographic dictation, the first author (according to Twain himself) to do so. This novel was, also (according to Twain), an attempt to write a book without mention of the weather, the “first of its kind in fictitious literature” (although the first sentence of the second paragraph references weather: "...fine, breezy morning"). All other weather references are contained in an appendix, at the back of the book, which the reader is encouraged to turn to from time to time.

     The American Claimant is a comedy of mistaken identities and multiple role switches. Its cast of characters include an American enamored of British hereditary aristocracy and a British earl entranced by American democracy. The novel was written very soon after “The Wounded Knee Massacre” (1890), which was basically revenge for the 1876 “Battle of Greasy Grass” (or "Little Big Horn"). This unprovoked and wanton slaughter seemingly derailed the “Indian” resistance to Euro-American territorial incursion and cultural forced assimilation.

     Although "anti-Indian" for the first decades of his life, it seems Twain at the end re-thought his position. Could it be the titled English heir ("Berkely Rossmore," who even dressed up as a cowboy and took the name “Howard Tracy” to remain incognito) was meant to represent wealthy Euro-Americans, whereas the uncouth and eccentric American ("Mulberry Sellers") was a symbol of the "Indians?”

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court is an 1889 novel by American humorist and writer Mark Twain. The book was originally titled A Yankee in King Arthur’s Court; some early editions are titled A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur.

    In the book a Yankee engineer from Connecticut is accidentally transported back in time to the court of King Arthur, where he fools the inhabitants of the time into thinking he is a magician, and soon uses his knowledge of modern technology to become a “magician” in earnest, stunning the English of the Early Middle Ages with such feats as demolitions, fireworks, and the shoring up of a holy well. He attempts to modernize the past, but in the end he is unable to prevent the death of Arthur and an injunction against him by the Catholic Church, which grows fearful of his power.

   Twain wrote the book as a burlesque of Romantic notions of chivalry after being inspired by a dream in which he was a knight himself, severely inconvenienced by the weight and cumbersome nature of his armor.

The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today

The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today is a novel by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner first published in 1873. It satirizes greed and political corruption in post-Civil War America in the era now referred to as the Gilded Age. Although not one of Twain’s best-known works, it has appeared in more than one hundred editions since its original publication; Twain and Warner originally had planned to issue the novel with illustrations by Thomas Nast. The book is remarkable for two reasons: it is the only novel Twain wrote with a collaborator, and its title very quickly became synonymous with materialism and corruption in public life.

Pudd'nhead Wilson

The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson (known more notably as Pudd'nhead Wilson) is a novel by Mark Twain. It was serialized in The Century Magazine (1893-1894) before being published as a novel in 1894.

    The setting is the fictional Missouri frontier town of Dawson’s Landing on the banks of the Mississippi River in the first half of the Nineteenth Century. David Wilson, a young lawyer, moves to town and a clever remark of his is misunderstood, causing locals to brand him a “pudd’nhead (or nitwit). His hobby of collecting fingerprints does not raise his standing in the townsfolk’s eyes either, who see him as an eccentric, and do not frequent his law practice.

    Puddn’head Wilson moves into the background as the focus shifts to the slave Roxy, her son, and the family they serve. Roxy is only one-sixteenth black, and her son Valet de Chambre (referred to as “Chambers") is only 1/32 black. Roxy is principally charged with caring for her inattentive master’s infant son Tom Driscoll, who is the same age as her own son. After fellow slaves are caught stealing and are nearly sold “down the river,” to a master further south, Roxy fears for her life and the life of her son. First she decides to kill herself and Chambers to avoid being sold down the river, but then decides instead to switch Chambers and Tom in their cribs so her son will live a life of privilege.

No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger

The Mysterious Stranger is the final novel attempted by the American author Mark Twain. He worked on it periodically from 1897-1908. The body of work is a serious social commentary by Twain addressing his ideas of the Moral Sense and the “damned human race.” Twain wrote multiple versions of the story; each is unfinished and involves a supernatural character called “Satan” or “No. 44.” Twain wrote the “St. Petersburg Fragment” in September 1897. It was set in the fictional town of St. Petersburg, a name Twain often used for Hannibal, Missouri.

     The first substantial version is entitled The Chronicle of Young Satan and relates the adventures of Satan, the sinless nephew of the biblical Satan in Eseldorf, an Austrian village, in the year 1702. Twain wrote this version between November 1897-September 1900. “Eseldorf” is German for “assville” or “donkeytown.”

The Prince and the Pauper

The Prince and the Pauper is a novel by American author Mark Twain. It was first published in 1881 in Canada, before its 1882 publication in the United States. The novel represents Twain’s first attempt at historical fiction. Set in 1547 it tells the story of two young boys who are identical in appearance: Tom Canty, a pauper who lives with his abusive father in Offal Court off Pudding Lane in London, and Prince Edward, son of King Henry VIII.

     Twain wrote The Prince and the Pauper having already started The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Twain wrote, “My idea is to afford a realizing sense of the exceeding severity of the laws of that day by inflicting some of their penalties upon the King himself and allowing him a chance to see the rest of them applied to others….” Having returned from a second European tour forming the basis of A Tramp Abroad (1880), Twain read extensively English and French history. Initially intended as a play, it was originally set in Victorian England, before he decided to set it further back in time.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

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 fictional town of St. Petersburg, inspired by Hannibal, Missouri, where Twain lived.

      Tom Sawyer lives with his Aunt Polly and his half-brother Sid. He skips school to swim and is made to whitewash the fence the next day as punishment. He cleverly persuades his friends to trade him small treasures for the privilege of doing his work. He then trades the treasures for Sunday School tickets which one normally receives for memorizing verses consistently, redeeming them for a Bible, much to the surprise and bewilderment of the superintendent who thought “it was simply preposterous that this boy had warehoused two thousand sheaves of Scriptural wisdom on his premises—a dozen would strain his capacity, without a doubt.”

      Tom falls in love with Becky Thatcher, a new girl in town, and persuades her to get “engaged” by kissing him. But their romance collapses when she learns Tom has been “engaged” previously to Amy Lawrence. Shortly after Becky shuns him, he accompanies Huckleberry Finn to the graveyard at night, where they witness a trio of body snatchers, Dr. Robinson, Muff Potter and Injun Joe, getting into a fight. While Potter is knocked unconscious during the scuffle, Injun Joe stabs the doctor to death and later pins the blame on Potter, who is arrested and suspected of the murder. Potter is then shunned by the whole town, except Huck and Tom, who know the real story. They decided “to keep mum” about this incident because they are afraid of Injun Joe murdering them.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

2nd (1st US) Edition Book Cover

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn  is a novel by Mark Twain, first published in the United Kingdom in December 1884 and in the United States in February 1885. Commonly named as a Great American Novel, the work is among the first in major American literature to be written throughout in vernacular English, characterized by local color regionalism. It is told in the first person by Huckleberry "Huck" Finn, a friend of Tom Sawyer and narrator of two other Twain novels (Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer, Detective.) It is a direct sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
     The book is noted for its colorful description of people and places along the Mississippi River. Set in a Southern antebellum society, ceasing to exist about twenty years before the work was published, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an often scathing satire on entrenched attitudes, particularly racism.