The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain
Mark Twain, Charles Neider
Hardcover
(Doubleday & Company, Jan. 1, 1957)
Here--for the first time--are all of Mark Twain's delightful, humorous, ironic short stories collected in one volume. There are sixty stories in all. They range in tone from the high-spirited "Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" to the symbolic "The Mysterious Stranger."It has been said of Mark Twain that a formal scheme was about as appealing to him as a tight collar. So it is not surprising that whenever Twain prepared a collection he would mix things up, give them variety, so that his readers might be surprised. Thus fact and fiction, stories, sketches, and articles have been indiscriminately mingled into volumes of adventure, travel, and autobiography. In this way--up to this time--many of his excellent short stories have been neglected and overlooked.Mark Twain's special genius was his infectious humor--a humor that came from his penetrating insight into the foibles and follies of human nature. This ability to make people laugh (although they might blush at the same time) is found in stories such as "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg," "The £1,000,000 Bank-Note," "Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven," and "The $30,000 Bequest." Others, such as "Cannibalism in the Cars" and "The Stolen White Elephant," while less well known, show us Mark Twain, the inimitable American humorist, at his best.
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