- Paperback: 400 pages
- Publisher: Modern Library; illustrated edition edition (April 13 2004)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0812971183
- ISBN-13: 978-0812971187
- Product Dimensions: 13.2 x 2.1 x 20.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 295 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #578,588 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Product Description
This unique collection of Twain’s essential short stories and semiautobiographical narratives is a testament to the author’s vast imagination. Featuring popular tales such as “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog” and “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg,” as well as some delightful excerpts from The Diaries of Adam and Eve, this compilation also includes darker works written in the author’s twilight years. These selections illuminate the depth of Twain’s artistry, humor, irony, and narrative genius.
About the Author
LAWRRENCE I. BERKOVE, this volume's editor, is a professor of English at the University of Michigan–Dearborn, and a noted authority on Mark Twain. He has published groundbreaking essays on Twain’s major novels, short fiction, travel literature, and religious values.
PETE HAMILL, this volume's introducer, is a journalist, screenwriter, novelist, and short-story writer, and the author of A Drinking Life: A Memoir and Why Sinatra Matters. His ten novels include Snow in August and Forever. He lives in New York City.
PETE HAMILL, this volume's introducer, is a journalist, screenwriter, novelist, and short-story writer, and the author of A Drinking Life: A Memoir and Why Sinatra Matters. His ten novels include Snow in August and Forever. He lives in New York City.
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First Sentence
Well, I called on good-natured, garrulous old Simon Wheeler, and I inquired after your friend Leonidas W. Smiley, as you requested me to do, and I hereunto append the result. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt
Well, I called on good-natured, garrulous old Simon Wheeler, and I inquired after your friend Leonidas W. Smiley, as you requested me to do, and I hereunto append the result. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.3 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Unavoidable!, Jan 26 2007
By Inspector Gadget "Go Go Gadget Reviews" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Best Short Stories of Mark Twain (Paperback)
I have no doubt that Mark Twain was one of the greatest writers ever and if you've read his more popular work then I suggest that you sit down with these rarely printed short stories to prove to yourself just what a genius he was. The stories here are so good they're unavoidable for Twain devotees. They amount of imagination crammed into these pages could provoke years of inspiration and pondering.While they are mostly all unrelated tales, Twain does have one main subtext for pretty much all of them-the futility of religion. Like myself, Twain believes that the romantic, fantastic notion of a judging, ever-watching and vengeful God to be absurd and works in so many ironies and injustices that give them a cruel, but somewhat realistic edge. The story of the Good Little Boy Who Did Not Prosper is but one shining example.
A lot of the stories are told from Twain's point of view, whether they are true are not I cannot possibly tell, but it's amusing to think of him at the centre of all these adventures.
Of the 23 stories on offer some only last a few pages while epic yarns such as Captain Stormfield's Visit To Heaven can fill-out 51 jam-packed pages. My favorites stories would have to A Private History of a Campaign That Failed (in which Twain and his Rebel pals spend the Civil War hanging around, swimming in ponds and hiding from the Yankees, until they accidently kill an unarmed enemy) and Political Economy (where Twain finds it appropriate to attach a thousand lightning conductors to the top of his house only for it to attract the mother of all lightning storms).
It's a perfect book for any Mark Twain fan, anyone who loves good literature or anyone studying English.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Effective Collection, April 22 2007
By Ryan Leack - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Best Short Stories of Mark Twain (Paperback)
This collection of short stories will is just what it says it is. While it does not give you any additional information on Mark Twain, it does provide you with some of his best short stories and allows you to envision this brilliant writer with some of his finest works. This volume is very humorous, so buy it if you enjoy Mark Twain or just want a good laugh or two.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Mostly great stories, mostly dull narration, Feb 17 2012
By Ash Ryan - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Best Short Stories of Mark Twain (Audio CD)
It takes a special kind of narrator to make an audiobook by Mark Twain almost boring, but Robin Field nearly manages it. To be fair, some of his voice characterizations when doing dialogue are quite good, but his straight narration is pretty dull. Still, Twain's writing is generally good enough that once you get accommodated to the lackluster reading after a couple of stories or so, you're able to just enjoy it on the strength of its own merits.Included here are some of the standard stories that are in practically every Twain collection, like "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog" and "Extracts from Adam's Diary" and "Eve's Diary", and some moderately well-known gems like "Punch, Brothers, Punch!" and "The Story of the Bad Little Boy Who Didn't Come to Grief"---but also a few that I had never encountered before, including the excellent "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg", a longer work that takes on some pretty serious themes, among others that untried virtue is not real virtue and ill-gotten gains are not gains at all.
So I give the collection of stories four and a half stars, but the narration only two and a half, for three and a half overall. I recommend either not getting the audio edition, or looking for another collection with a different reader.
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