Pudd'nhead Wilson

Mark Twain

Jan 2005 · Prestwick House Inc

About this ebook

This Prestwick House Literary Touchstone Classic includes a glossary and reader's notes to help the modern reader appreciate Twain's perspective on the human race.UNLEASHING THE ACERBIC WIT for which he was already famous, Mark Twain released Pudd'nhead Wilson in 1894 to a public not quite prepared for the American satirist's dark attack on lingering racism following the Civil War and the failure of Reconstruction. The stories of twin Italian circus performers, a beautiful slave, and a lawyer whose wry observations earn him the reputation of the village idiot converge in the fictional town of Dawson's Landing, Missouri, where the newly discovered use of fingerprints helps to expose the hypocrisy of late-Victorian morality and solve a murder.Each chapter begins with a quotation from Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar, and these Franklin-like aphorisms propel the story forward. As Twain himself said, "There ain't any weather in it, and there ain't any scenery-the story is stripped for flight!"And, once it takes off, there's no pausing until the last ironic twist is revealed. If you're already a fan of Mark Twain, you'll love Pudd'nhead Wilson. If you're not a fan, this book will make you one.

Ratings and reviews

Good

About the author

Mark Twain was born Samuel L. Clemens in Florida, Missouri on November 30, 1835. He worked as a printer, and then became a steamboat pilot. He traveled throughout the West, writing humorous sketches for newspapers. In 1865, he wrote the short story, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, which was very well received. He then began a career as a humorous travel writer and lecturer, publishing The Innocents Abroad in 1869, Roughing It in 1872, and, Gilded Age in 1873, which was co-authored with Charles Dudley Warner. His best-known works are The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mississippi Writing: Life on the Mississippi, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He died of a heart attack on April 21, 1910.