The Portable Mark TwainIntroduction
Suggestions for Further Reading
Note on Texts
Chronology
Tales and Sketches
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (1865)
How I Edited an Agricultural Journal Once (1870)
From Roughing It (1872)
The Story of the Old Ram
Buck Fanshaw's Funeral
Letters for Greeley
An Encounter with an Interviewer (1874)
A True Story, Repeated Word for Word as I Heard It (1874)
from The Innocents Abroad (1869)
The Sea of Galilee
At the Tomb of Adam
from The Gilded Age (1873)
Colonel Sellers Entertains Washington Hawkins
from A Tramp Abroad (1880)
Jim Baker's Blue-Jay Yarn
The Hair Trunk
from Life on the Mississippi (1883)
The River and Its History
The Boys' Ambition
Perplexing Lessons
Continued Perplexities
Sunrise on the River
The House Beautiful
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)
I. Civilizing Huck, Miss Watson, Tom Sawyer Waits
II. The Boys Escape Jim, Tom Sawyer's Gang, Deep-laid Plans
III. A Good Going Over, Grace Triumphant, One of Tom Sawyer's
Lies
IV. Huck and the Judge, Superstition
V. Huck's Father, The Fond Parent, Reform
VI. He Went for Judge Thatcher, Huck Decided to Leave, Political
Economy, Thrashing Around
VII. Laying for Him, Locked in the Cabin, Sinking the Body,
Resting
VIII. Sleeping in the Woods, Raising the Dead, Exploring the
Island, Finding Jim, Jim's Escape, Signs, Balum
IX. The Cave, The Floating House
X. The Find, Old Hank Bunker, In Disguise
XI. Huck and the Woman, The Search, Prevarication, Going to
Goshen
XII. Slow Navigation, Borrowing Things, Boarding the Wreck, The
Plotters, Huntingfor the Boat
XIII. Escaping from the Wreck, The Watchman, Sinking
XIV. A General Good Time, The Harem, French
XV. Huck Loses the Raft, In the Fog, Huck Finds the Raft, Trash
XVI. Give Us a Rest, The Corpse-Maker Crows, The Child of Calamity,
They Both Weaken, Little Davy Steps In, After the Battle, Ed's
Adventures, Something Queer, A Haunted Barrel, It Brings a Storm,
The Barrel Pursues, Killed by Lightning, Allbright Atones, Ed Gets
Mad, Snake of Boy?, Snake Him Out, Some Lively Lying, Off and
Overboard, Expectation, A White Lie, Floating Currency, Running by
Cairo, Swimming Ashore
XVII. An Evening Call, The Farm in Arkansaw, Interior Decorations,
Stephen Dowling Bots, Poetical Effusion
XVIII. Col. Grangerford, Aristocracy, Feuds, The Testament,
Recovering the Raft, The Wood-pile, Pork and Cabblage
XIX. Tying Up Day-times, An Astronomical Theory, Running a
Temperance Revival, The Duke of Bridgewater, The Troubles of
Royalty
XX. Huck Explains, Laying Out a Campaign, Working the Camp-meeting,
A Pirate at the Camp-meeting, The Duke as a Printer
XXI. Sword Exercise, Hamlet's Soliloquy, They Loafed Around Town, A
Lazy Town, Old Boggs, Dead
XXII. Sherburn, Attending the Circus, Intoxication in the Ring, The
Thrilling Tragedy
XXIII. Sold!, Royal Comparisons, Jim Gets Home-sick
XXIV. Jim in Royal Robes, They Take a Passenger, Getting
Information, Family Grief
XXV. Is It Them?, Singing the Doxologer, Awful Square, Funeral
Orgies, A Bad Investment
XXVI. A Pious King, The King's Clergy, She Asked His Pardon, Hiding
in the Room, Huck Takes the Money
XXVII. The Funeral, Satisfying Curiosity, Suspicious of Huck, Quick
Sales and Small Profits
XXVIII. The Trip to England, The Brute!, Mary Jane Decided to
Leave, Huck Parting with Mary Jane, Mumps, The Opposition Line
XXIX. Contested Relationship, The King Explains the Loss, A
Question of Handwriting, Digging up the Corpse, Huck Escapes
XXX. The King Went for Him, A Royal Row, Powerful Mellow
XXXI. Ominous Plans, News from Jim, Old Recollections, A Sheep
Story, Valuable Information
XXXII. Still and Sunday-like, Mistaken Identity, Up a Stump, In a
Dilemma
XXXIII. A Nigger Stealer, Southern Hospitality, A Pretty Long
Blessing, Tar and Feathers
XXXIV. The Hut by the Ash Hopper, Outrageous, Climbing the
Lightning Rod, Troubled with Witches
XXXV. Escaping Property, Dark Schemes, Discrimination in Stealing,
A Deep Hole
XXXVI. The Lightning Rod, His Level Best, A Bequest to Posterity, A
High Figure
XXXVII. The Last Shirt, Mooning Around, Sailing Orders, The Witch
Pie
XXXVIII. The Coat of Arms, A Skilled Superintendant, Unpleasant
Glory, A Tearful Subject
XXXIX. Rats, Lively Bed-Fellows, The Straw Dummy
XL. Fishing, The Vigilance Committee, A Lively Run, Jim Advises a
Doctor
XLI. The Doctor, Uncle Silas, Sister Hotchkiss, Aunt Sally in
Trouble
XLII. Tom Sawyer Wounded, The Doctor's Story, Tom Confesses, Aunt
Polly Arrives, Hand Out Them Letters
CHAPTER THE LAST. Out of Bondage, Paying the Captive, Yours Truly,
Huck Finn
The Private History of a Campaign That Failed
(1885)
from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
(1889)
The Yankee in Search of Adventures
The Holy Fountain
Extracts from Adam's Diary (1893)
from The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894), from
Following the Equator (1897)
from The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson
Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
fromFollowing the Equator
Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar
Decimating the Savages
To the Person Sitting in Darkenss (1901)
Corn-Pone Opinions (1901)
Early Days (1907)
Speeches
Farewell Banquet for Bayard Taylor (1878)
Plymouth Rock and the Pilgrims (1881)
Advice to Youth (1882)
The Alphabet and Simplified Spelling (1907)
Education and Citizenship (1908)
Letters
To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, 1/20/1866
To W.D. Howells, 12/8/1874
To W.D. Howells, 8/9/1876
To J.H. Burrough, 11/1/1876
To the Reverend J.H. Twitchell, 1/26/1879
To Orion Clemens and Family, 7/21/1883
To Frank A. Nichols, Secretary, Concord Free, Trade Club,
3/1/1885
To Jeanette Gilder (not mailed), 5/14/1887
To Andrew Lang, early 1890
Fragment of letter to-, 1891
To Susan Crane, 3/19/1893
To Major Jack Downing, 2/26/1899
To W.D. Howells, 4/2/1899
To Reverend J.H. Twitchell, 2/1902
TO Miss Picard, 2/22/1902
To Robert Fulton, 5/24/1905
Biographical List of COrrespondents
Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in Florida, Missouri,
in 1835, and died at Redding, Connecticut in 1910. In his person
and in his pursuits he was a man of extraordinary contrasts.
Although he left school at twelve when his father died, he was
eventually awarded honorary degrees from Yale University, the
University of Missouri, and Oxford University. His career
encompassed such varied occupations as printer, Mississippi
riverboat pilot, journalist, travel writer, and publisher. He made
fortunes from his writing but toward the end of his life he had to
resort to lecture tours to pay his debts. He was hot-tempered,
profane, and sentimentaland also pessimistic, cynical, and
tortured by self-doubt. His nostalgia helped produce some of his
best books. He lives in American letters as a great artist, the
writer whom William Dean Howells called "the Lincoln of our
literature."
Tom Quirk is the Catherine Paine Middlebush Professor of English at
the University of Missouri-Columbia. He is the editor of the
Penguin Classics editions of Mark Twain's Tales, Speeches, Essays,
and Sketches (1994) and Ambrose Bierce's Tales of Soldiers and
Civilians and Other Stories (2000) and co-editor of The Portable
American Realism Reader (1997). His other books include Coming to
Grips with Huckleberry Finn (1993), Mark Twain- A Study of the
Short Fiction (1997) and Nothing Abstract- Investigations in the
American Literary Imagination (2001).
"Trying to put your arms around Mark Twain is like trying to
embrace the Mississippi. He is endless. This Portable,
however, should open his richness to the new reader and remind the
older ones of the wealth they may have forgotten. Reading him again
is like biting into fresh bread."—Arthur Miller
"An indispensable anthology of America's indispensable author."
—Justin Kaplan
"If you need a good solid comprehensive handful of Mark Twain to
keep with you—and who doesn't?—this is it."
—Roy Blount, Jr.
"If this isn't the thoughtfulest and usefulest hand-tooled
gilt-edged one-volume Twain, I am a horned toad."
—Frederick Crews
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