Satirist, novelist, and keen observer of the American scene, Mark Twain remains one of the world's best-loved writers. This delightful collection of Twain's favorite and most memorable writings includes selected tales and sketches such as The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, How I Edited an Agricultural Journal Once, Jim Baker's Blue-Jay Yarn, and A True Story. It also features excerpts from his novels and travel books (including Roughing It, The Innocents Abroad, and Life on the Mississippi, among others; autobiographical and polemical writings; as well as selected letters and speeches.
The collection also reprints the complete text of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, including the often omitted raftsmen passage.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
By:
Mark Twain
Introduction by:
Tom Quirk
Edited by:
Tom Quirk
Imprint: Penguin Books Ltd
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 197mm,
Width: 130mm,
Spine: 37mm
Weight: 516g
ISBN: 9780142437759
ISBN 10: 0142437751
Pages: 640
Publication Date: 30 November 2004
Audience:
General/trade
,
ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
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 sentimental—and 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).
Reviews for The Portable Mark Twain
Trying to put your arms around Mark Twain is like trying to embrace the Mississippi. He is endless. This<i>Portable</i>, 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
