Huck Finn; Pudd'nhead Wilson; No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger; and Other Writings

This volume contains three of Mark Twain's novels, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Pudd'nhead Wilson, and No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger, the tale "Jim Smiley's Jumping Frog," and a selection of ten sketches.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was probably begun early in July 1876, for on August 9 Clemens wrote to tell William Dean Howells that he had started another boys' book. Soon afterwards, however, he set aside the approximately 400 pages of manuscript that he had composed. He may have taken it up again in the winter of 1879–80; probably he prepared some working notes in 1882; and he went seriously to work in 1883. On August 22, 1883, he informed Howells that he had almost finished; on April 8, 1884, he thanked Howells for offering to read proof for him; and on August 7 he mailed proofs to Howells.

The first American edition of February 18, 1885, is at present the best available text. A holograph manuscript of about 700 sheets of octavo-sized paper representing approximately three-fifths of the book, preserved at the Buffalo Public Library, is fragmentary and in important respects unlike the finished book. It begins in the middle of chapter XII, continues through chapter XIV, resumes again with chapter XXII, and continues to the end. Howells had part of a manuscript retyped in May 1884, and somewhat more than one-fourth of the book, much edited by Richard Watson Gilder, appeared in Century Magazine. Existing proof sheets for the book (preserved among the Mark Twain Papers at Berkeley) cover a part of the text that is missing from the manuscript. Following editing of a typescript by Howells, the novels was printed by Clemens' own publishing house under the eye of his manager, Charles L. Webster. Some printer's proofs were read by Howells; Clemens wrote, "I cursed my way through the rest and survived." The text printed here is that of the first American edition.

Clemens once commented that writing Pudd'nhead Wilson cost him little effort but that revising it almost killed him. The novel that he published was indeed radically different from the one that he began to write some time after December 1891, when conjoined Italian twins began to tour the United States. He worked on the story in Europe early in 1892. An incomplete manuscript of perhaps 10,000 words called "Those Extraordinary Twins," now preserved in the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library, records this early stage in the work's development. During the summer of 1892 he continued revising, ending in December with a long, mainly holograph, partly typescript text that was commented on unfavorably by his wife and by readers in New York. This extended version is now preserved in the J. Pierpont Morgan Library.

During June and July of 1893, Clemens again substantially revised his work, separating the twins, subordinated nonessential characters, and centering the story, he said, on the murder and the trial. The resulting text, probably mainly typescript, was ready on August 14 to send to Century Magazine, which bought the serial rights in September 1893, and published the story, from December 1893 through June 1894, under the title "Pudd'nhead Wilson, A Tale." Clemens himself read at least part of the proof of the Century text.

For book publication Clemens turned to the American Publishing Company, from which he had parted in anger a dozen years earlier, and to Chatto & Windus, in England. The American publisher used the Century text for printer's copy of Pudd'nhead Wilson and added what Clemens called "refuse matter," a patched-together version of the excluded story of Siamese twins, to enlarge the volume. This edition was almost surely not proofread by Clemens, nor was the English first edition (which does not include the "refuse matter," Those Extraordinary Twins). Readers who wish to examine lists of variants between the different versions of Clemens's work may consult the text established by Sidney E. Berger, Puddn'head Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1980). This volume reprints the 1893–94 Century text.

The first published version of No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger was issued posthumously in an edition prepared by Albert Bigelow Paine, Twain's biographer and literary executor, and Frederick A. Duneka, an editor at Harper and Brothers. This version, entitled The Mysterious Stranger, A Romance, was published as a Christmas gift-book in 1916. Although Paine claimed that they had printed Twain's "final complete work," their edition was in fact assembled from three Mark Twain manuscripts: "The Chronicle of Young Satan," written between 1897 to 1900, and left incomplete; "Schoolhouse Hill," written in 1898 and also left incomplete; and "No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger," written mostly between 1902 and 1905, and last worked on in 1908. The liberties taken by Paine and Duneka's edition, based primarily on the "The Young Satan" manuscript, were extreme and resulted in a work that Clemens would not have recognized. Mark Twain's language was bowdlerized; one-fourth of the "Young Satan" manuscript was cut; an astrologer, who did not appear in the manuscript, was introduced into the story; the concluding chapter Mark Twain had written for his latest and longest version, "No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger," was grafted onto the end of the book, with alterations of the characters' names in order to make the ending consistent with "The Chronicle of Young Satan." These alterations were first discussed in John S. Tuckey's Mark Twain and Little Satan in 1963.

The three manuscripts relating to No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger are in the Mark Twain Papers in the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley. They were published in an edition prepared by William M. Gibson in Mark Twain's Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969). Those texts were carefully established from the manuscripts, and the typesetting meticulously checked, by Professor Gibson and the staff of the Mark Twain Project in accord with the standards of the Center for Editions of American Authors (CEAA). This volume's text of No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger, is taken from the 1982 paperback edition based on Gibson's text as it appeared in Mark Twain's Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts. The paperback edition differs from the original 1969 typesetting only in its adoption of the full title and subtitle preserved in Mark Twain's manuscript. For more information about Mark Twain's composition of this novel and about related matters, see William M. Gibson, Mark Twain's Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969); John S. Tuckey, Mark Twain and Little Satan: The Writing of "The Mysterious Stranger" (West Lafayette: Purdue University Studies, 1963); John S. Tuckey, The Mysterious Stranger and the Critics (Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1968); Sholom J. Kahn, Mark Twain's Mysterious Stranger: A Study of the Manuscript Texts (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1978).

"Jim Smiley's Jumping Frog" first appeared in the New York Saturday Press of November 18, 1865. Manuscripts of two earlier versions survive in the Jean Webster McKinney Family Papers at Vassar. The story was later reprinted in many collections. The text in this volume is the one printed in Early Tales & Sketches: Volume 2, 1864–65 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), edited by Edgar Marquess Branch and Robert H. Hirst with the assistance of Harriet Elinor Smith.

For six of the ten sketches printed in this volume, the texts are taken from their first periodical appearances, listed below:

• "The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut." Atlantic Monthly, June 1876, pp. 641–50. Twain read this speech before the Hartford Monday Evening Club on January 24, 1876.
• "The Private History of a Campaign That Failed. " Century Magazine, December 1885, pp. 193–204.
• "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses." North American Review, July 1895, pp. 48–62.
• "How To Tell a Story." Youth's Companion, October 3, 1895, p. 464.
• "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg." Harper's Monthly, December 1899, pp. 29–54.
• "To the Person Sitting in the Darkness." North American Review, February 1901, pp. 161–76.
• "The United States of Lyncherdom" was composed in August 1901 but not published in Twain's lifetime. The text printed in this volume is that of Albert Bigelow Paine (ed.), Europe and Elsewhere (New York: Harper & Row, 1923), pp. 239–49.

"Corn-Pone Opinions" was written sometime in 1901. A notebook entry for January 31, 1901, and an annotated clipping from the New York Herald of February 18, 1901, make reference to "Hoecake opinions" and "Corn-pone," respectively. A holograph manuscript and a typescript survive, but the typescript contains no corrections or revisions by Twain. Deletions and cancellations on the manuscript in pencil by another hand (possibly Albert Bigelow Paine's) are reflected in the typescript and in the first published appearance in 1923 in Europe and Elsewhere, edited by Paine. The text in this volume is taken from What Is Man? And Other Philosophical Writings (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), edited by Paul Baender, pp. 92–97. Baender's edition of the text is based on the manuscript and includes portions omitted in earlier published versions.

"The War Prayer" was written on or before March 10, 1905, when Isabel Lyon recorded in her diary that Twain had read it to some friends. It was not published during Twain's life, and it first appeared in 1923 in Europe and Elsewhere, edited by Albert Bigelow Paine. The text in this volume is taken from A Pen Warmed-up in Hell: Mark Twain in Protest (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), edited by Frederick Anderson, pp. 88–91, which was prepared from the surviving typescript in the Mark Twain Papers bearing Twain's final revisions.

"The Turning Point of My Life" first appeared in Harper's Bazaar for February 1910. It was rewritten late in 1909, after Albert Bigelow Paine and Jean Clemens disapproved of an earlier version. The text in this volume is taken from What Is Man? And Other Philosophical Writings, edited by Paul Baender, pp. 455–64. Baender has examined the surviving manuscript, typescript, and proof, as well as the first published appearance, and has prepared a critical edition based upon Mark Twain's final holographic text, with the exception of the last two paragraphs, which are not in manuscript, typescript, or proof, and so are based on the first publication in Harper's Bazaar.

This volume preserves the spelling, punctuation, and wording of the editions reprinted here. It presents the texts of the printings chosen for inclusion here but does not attempt to reproduce features of their typographic design. Spelling, punctuation, and capitalization are often expressive features and they are not altered, even when inconsistent or irregular.

Copyright 1995–2007 Literary Classics of the United States, Inc.
Contact Us | Privacy and Security

Make a tax-deductible gift of volumes to a library of your choice.