The South was many things to Mark Twain: boyhood home, testing ground for manhood, and the principal source of creative inspiration. Although he left the South while a young man, seldom to return, it remained for him always a haunting presence, alternately loved and loathed. Mark Twain and the South was the first book on this major yet largely ignored aspect of the private life of Samuel Clemens and one of the major themes in his writing from 1863 until his death. Arthur G. Pettit clearly demonstrates that Mark Twain's feelings on race and region moved in an intelligible direction from the white Southern point of view he was exposed to in his youth to self-censorship, disillusionment, and, ultimately, a deeply pessimistic and sardonic outlook in which the dream of racial brotherhood was forever dead. Approaching his subject as a historian with a deep appreciation for literature, he bases his study on a wide variety of Mark Twain's published and unpublished works, including his notebooks, scrapbooks, and letters. An interesting feature of this illuminating work is an examination of Clemens's relations with the only two black men he knew well in his adult years.

"For those unaware—as I was until I read this book—that Mark Twain was one of America's early animal advocates, Shelley Fisher Fishkin's collection of his writings on animals will come as a revelation. Many of these pieces are as fresh and lively as when they were first written, and it's wonderful to have them gathered in one place." —Peter Singer, author of Animal Liberation and The Life You Can Save “A truly exhilarating work. Mark Twain's animal-friendly views would not be out of place today, and indeed, in certain respects, Twain is still ahead of us: claiming, correctly, that there are certain degraded practices that only humans inflict on one another and upon other animals. Fishkin has done a splendid job: I cannot remember reading something so consistently excellent."—Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, author of When Elephants Weep and The Face on Your Plate "Shelley Fisher Fishkin has given us the lifelong arc of the great man's antic, hilarious, and subtly profound explorations of the animal world, and she's guided us through it with her own trademark wit and acumen. Dogged if she hasn't." —Ron Powers, author of Dangerous Water: A Biography of the Boy Who Became Mark Twain and Mark Twain: A Life

This is a story of a sober kind, picturing life in a little town of Missouri, half a century ago. The principal incidents relate to a slave of mixed blood and her almost pure white son, whom she substitutes for her master's baby. The slave by birth grows up in wealth and luxury, but turns out a peculiarly mean scoundrel, and perpetrating a crime, meets with due justice. The science of fingerprints is practically illustrated in detecting the fraud. The title character is the village atheist, whose maxims doubtless express much of the author's own disillusion.

No library's complete without the classics! This new, enhanced leather-bound edition collects some of the most popular works of legendary humorist and novelist Mark Twain. Mark Twain wrote his greatest works more than one hundred years ago, but he's never far from the minds of Americans. Whether it's the new, complete, and uncensored version of his autobiography hitting bestseller lists or the removal of certain controversial language from one of his novels, his name and his legacy remain a topic of conversation--and undoubtedly will for years to come. There's no better time to appreciate his stories, or read them for the very first time. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Prince and the Pauper, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson are collected in this timeless and elegant book. Part of the Canterbury Classics series, Mark Twain features a beautiful cover, a ribbon bookmark, and other elements to enhance the reading experience, along with an introduction by a renowned Twain scholar that will enlighten new and familiar readers alike. This edition of Mark Twain is a treasure to enjoy forever--just like the writing of Twain himself!

My brother had just been appointed Secretary of Nevada Territory-an office of such majesty that it concentrated in itself the duties and dignities of Treasurer, Comptroller, Secretary of State, and Acting Governor in the Governor's absence. A salary of eighteen hundred dollars a year and the title of "Mr. Secretary," gave to the great position an air of wild and imposing grandeur. I was young and ignorant, and I envied my brother. I coveted his distinction and his financial splendor, but particularly and especially the long, strange journey he was going to make, and the curious new world he was going to explore. He was going to travel! I never had been away from home, and that word "travel" had a seductive charm for me. Pretty soon he would be hundreds and hundreds of miles away on the great plains and deserts, and among the mountains of the Far West, and would see buffaloes and Indians, and prairie dogs, and antelopes, and have all kinds of adventures, and may be get hanged or scalped, and have ever such a fine time, and write home and tell us all about it, and be a hero. And he would see the gold mines and the silver mines, and maybe go about of an afternoon when his work was done, and pick up two or three pailfuls of shining slugs, and nuggets of gold and silver on the hillside.

For deft plotting, riotous inventiveness, unforgettable characters, and language that brilliantly captures the lively rhythms of American speech, no American writer comes close to Mark Twain. This sparkling anthology covers the entire span of Twain’s inimitable yarn-spinning, from his early broad comedy to the biting satire of his later years. Every one of his sixty stories is here: ranging from the frontier humor of “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” to the bitter vision of humankind in “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg,” to the delightful hilarity of “Is He Living or Is He Dead?” Surging with Twain’s ebullient wit and penetrating insight into the follies of human nature, this volume is a vibrant summation of the career of–in the words of H. L. Mencken–“the father of our national literature.”

One of America's greatest storytellers, Samuel Clemens had something witty and wise to say on just about any topic. Gathered from his classic novels, diary entries, newspaper articles, and correspondence, this collection of wry quips and quotes reflects his keen observations on animals, critics, doctors, laughter, politics, youth, and more.