Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is essential to the understanding of the American soul. The recent discovery of the first half of Twain's manuscript, long thought lost, made front-page news. And this unprecedented edition, which contains for the first time omitted episodes and other variations present in the first half of the handwritten manuscript, as well as facsimile reproductions of thirty manuscript pages, is indispensable to a full understanding of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The changes, deletions, and additions that Mark Twain made in the first half of the original manuscript (changes that are larger and more numerous and significant than those he made in the second half) indicate that he frequently checked his impulse to write an even darker, more confrontational work than the book he finally published. He deleted an episode in which whites at a religious camp meeting try to avoid the embraces of a black slave woman - a woman who may think, mistakenly, that she has just been freed. And even in its smallest variations - such as the consistent alteration of vicious rawhide whippings to ordinary cowhide whippings - the original manuscript demonstrates the skill, the restraint, and the constraints that affected Mark Twain's creative process.

An anthology encompassing The Prince and the Pauper, A Connecticut Yankee, and Joan of Arc features Twain's imaginative studies of the Middle Ages, in a children's classic, a unique comic-violent fantasy, and a respectful fictional biography.

€ 35,70

This novel tells the story of Hank Morgan, the quintessential self-reliant New Englander who brings to King Arthur's Age of Chivalry the “great and beneficent” miracles of nineteenth-century engineering and American ingenuity. Through the collision of past and present, Twain exposes the insubstantiality of both utopias, destroying the myth of the romantic ideal as well as his own era's faith in scientific and social progress.

A central document in American intellectual history, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is at once a hilarious comedy of anachronisms and incongruities, a romantic fantasy, a utopian vision, and a savage, anarchic social satire that only one of America's greatest writers could pen.

In 'Come curare la malinconia' Mark Twain ci propone uno scrittore inventato, G. Ragsdale McKinnock, autore di una grande, insuperata opera ovviamente non meno inventata, ma di cui Mark Twain si premura di citarci, commentandoli, interi passi. Una situazione non molto dissimile si trova nel secondo racconto, 'Telegrafia mentale', protagonista un noto quanto immaginario studioso di scienze psichiche, alle prese con i fenomeni della telepatia applicata nientemeno che al telegrafo. Chiude infine il volumetto il racconto 'La signora McWilliams e il fulmine', tutto giocato sulla paradossale situazione scatenata da un temporale che non è mai avvenuto.

Come lo stesso autore scrisse, il racconto raccoglie molte vicende veramente accadute, esperienze personali e altre di ragazzi che furono compagni di scuo- la di Mark Twain. La storia s'impernia sulla vicenda capitata ai due amici Huck e Tom, andati a seppellire un gatto a mezzanotte nel cimitero del vil- laggio. Nel cimitero i nostri eroi, quella notte, sono gli invisibili testimoni d'un assassinio. Twain dedicava il libro ad un vasto pubblico di lettori giovani per ricordar loro quelli che essi erano un tempo e come sentivano e pensavano e parlavano e in quali strane avventure talvolta andassero a cacciarsi.

Il libro, uscito nel 1885, costituisce una vasta epopea dell'America degli avventurieri e delle miserabili città dislocate lungo la vallata del Missouri e dell'Ohio, l'America dell'età dell'oro e della colonizzazione, della vita violenta e della vita semplice e patriarcale. Tom Sawyer e Huckleberry Finn sono il tipico ritratto del ragazzo americano e del suo rapporto con questo mondo. Huckleberry, fuggito dalle persecuzioni di un padre ubriacone, dopo aver vissuto dentro una botte da zucchero, di nuovo fuggiasco, intraprende un grande viaggio sul Missouri, in compagnia di uno schiavo negro: Jim un altro miserevole evaso. Avventure complicate e incontri imprevisti, fino all'incontro con Tom Sawyer. Introduzione di G. Zammanchi e un saggio di T. S. Elliot.

Come lo stesso autore scrisse, il racconto raccoglie molte vicende veramente accadute, esperienze personali e altre di ragazzi che furono compagni di scuola di Mark Twain. La storia s'impernia sulla vicenda capitata ai due amici Huck e Tom, andati a seppellire un gatto a mezzanotte nel cimitero del villaggio. Nel cimitero i nostri eroi, quella notte, sono gli invisibili testimoni d'un assassinio. Twain dedicava il libro ad un vasto pubblico di lettori giovani per ricordar loro quelli che essi erano un tempo e come sentivano e pensavano e parlavano e in quali strane avventure talvolta andassero a cacciarsi.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is essential to the understanding of the American soul. The recent discovery of the first half of Twain's manuscript, long thought lost, made front-page news. And this unprecedented edition, which contains for the first time omitted episodes and other variations present in the first half of the handwritten manuscript, as well as facsimile reproductions of thirty manuscript pages, is indispensable to a full understanding of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The changes, deletions, and additions that Mark Twain made in the first half of the original manuscript (changes that are larger and more numerous and significant than those he made in the second half) indicate that he frequently checked his impulse to write an even darker, more confrontational work than the book he finally published. He deleted an episode in which whites at a religious camp meeting try to avoid the embraces of a black slave woman - a woman who may think, mistakenly, that she has just been freed. And even in its smallest variations - such as the consistent alteration of vicious rawhide whippings to ordinary cowhide whippings - the original manuscript demonstrates the skill, the restraint, and the constraints that affected Mark Twain's creative process.

This witty, caustic work is Mark Twain's extended attack on Christian Science and its founder, Mary Baker Eddy, who he once described as the 'queen of frauds and hypocrites.' In 1898, when he set out to write this book, Twain feared that Christian Science would spread so rapidly that it would control Congress by the 1930's.

Twain, having suffered the intense sorrow and anguish of the death of two of his children, and later of his beloved wife, Olivia, in 1904, reacted savagely to the claim of Christian Science that pain, sickness, and death do not exist. When Harper's refused to publish Christian Science in 1903, Twain interpreted the rejection as suppression and wrote, 'The situation is not barren of humor. I had been doing my best to show in print that the Xn Scientist cult has become a power in the land - well, here is the proof: it has scared the biggest publisher in the Union.'

In this offensive against Mrs. Eddy, Twain analyzes her greed, her lust for power, her self-dedication, and her incoherent writing. He examines the rules and by-laws of the church with all the strength of his formidable debating skills.

Christian Science was nine years in the making - begun in 1898 and finally published in 1907. This is the first paperback edition of a book that was unavailable to the general public for more than fifty years.

Come sempre candido e scaltro Twain irride ogni cosa, dal governo centrale ai coyote e ci offre una sequenza di 79 capitoli che sono ciascuno un piccolo romanzo, con la prodigalità di un giocatore di roulette che per una volta è uscito dalla bisca per farsi ripulire. Ogni capitolo è una chiacchierata intorno al fuoco e la somma di queste chiacchiere è un'epopea. Twain ride per sopravvivere, e far sopravvivere, in mezzo agli orrori e allo splendore del West.

This with its companion volume is the most comprehensive collection ever published of Mark Twain's short writings: the incomparable stories, sketches, burlesques, hoaxes, tall tales, speeches, satires, and maxims of America's greatest humorist. Arranged chronologically and containing many pieces restored to the form in which Twain intended them to appear, the volumes show with unprecedented clarity the literary evolution of Mark Twain over six decades of his career.
This volume contains eighty pieces from the years 1891 to 1910, when Twain emerged from bankruptcy and personal tragedy to become the white-suited, cigar- smoking international celebrity who reported on his own follies and those of humanity with an unerring sense of the absurd. Some stories display Twain's fascination with money and greed, such as 'The Esquimau Maiden's Romance' and 'The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg.' Other stories, written after the death of his daughter Susy in 1896, explore the outer limits of fantasy and psychic phenomena, including 'Which Was the Dream?,' 'The Great Dark,' and 'My Platonic Sweetheart.'
The United States military involvement in Cuba, China, and the Philippines turned Twain's attention to political satire and invective. 'To the Person Sitting in Darkness,' 'The United States of Lyncherdom,' 'The Czar's Soliloquy,' 'King Leopold's Soliloquy,' and 'The War Prayer' are biting denunciations of European and American imperialism. Other political issues inspired articles and stories about the Jews, the notorious Dreyfus case, and vivisection. Twain's increasingly unorthodox religious opinions are powerfully, often comically expressed in 'Extracts from Adam's Diary,' 'Eve's Diary,' 'Eve Speaks,' 'Adam's Soliloquy,' 'A Humane Word from Satan,' 'What Is Man?,' 'Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven,' and 'Letters from the Earth.'
'Against the assault of laughter,' he said, 'nothing can stand.' Twain's brilliant inventiveness continues to shine in such later comic masterpieces as 'Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences,' 'Italian Without a Master,' 'Hunting the Deceitful Turkey,' and 'My First Lie and How I Got Out of It.' A posthumous collection of proverbs and aphorisms ('More Maxims of Mark') is included as an appendix.
The publishing history of every story, essay, article, and speech has been thoroughly researched, and in each instance the most authoritative text has been reproduced. This collection also includes an extensive chronology of Twain's complex life, helpful notes on the people and events referred to in his works, and a guide to the texts.

This with its companion volume is the most comprehensive collection ever published of Mark Twain's short writings: the incomparable stories, sketches, burlesques, hoaxes, tall tales, speeches, satires, and maxims of America's greatest humorist. Arranged chronologically and containing many pieces never before collected, the volumes show with unprecedented clarity the literary evolution of Mark Twain across six decades of his career.
The 191 separate items in this volume cover the years from 1852 to 1890. As a riverboat pilot, Confederate irregular, silver miner, frontier journalist, and publisher, Twain witnessed the tragicomic beginning of the Civil War in Missouri, the frenzied opening of the West, and the feverish corruption, avarice, and ambition of the Reconstruction era. He wrote about political bosses, jumping frogs, robber barons, cats, women's suffrage, temperance, petrified men, the bicycle, the Franco-Prussian War, the telephone, the income tax, the insanity defense, injudicious swearing, and the advisability of political candidates preemptively telling the worst about themselves before others get around to it.
Among the stories included in this volume are 'Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog,' which won him instant fame when published in 1865, 'Cannibalism in the Cars,' 'The Invalid's Story,' all three stories of the McWilliamses, and the charming 'A Cat Tale,' written for his daughters' private amusement. This volume also presents several of his famous and successful speeches and toasts, such as 'Woman - God Bless Her,' 'The Babies,' and 'Advice to Youth.' Such writings brought Twain immense success on the public lecture and banquet circuit, as did his controversial 'Whittier Birthday Speech,' which portrayed Boston's most revered men of letters as a band of desperados.
'Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand,' he once wrote. A master of deadpan hilarity, a storyteller who fashioned an exuberant style rooted in the idiom of of his western origins, and an enemy of injustice who used scathing invective and subtle satire to expose the 'humbug' of his time, Twain, like Franklin, Whitman, and Lincoln, helped shape the American language into a unique democratic idiom that was to be heard around the world.
The publishing history of every story, sketch, and speech in this volume has been thoroughly researched, and in each instance the most authoritative text has been reproduced. This collection also includes an extensive chronology of Twain's life, helpful notes on the people and events referred to in his works, and a guide to the texts.

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

Along with Blake and Dickens, Mark Twain was one of the nineteenth century’s greatest chroniclers of childhood. These two novels reveal different aspects of his genius: Tom Sawyer is a much-loved story about the sheer pleasure of being a boy; Huckleberry Finn, the book Hemingway said was the source of all the American fiction that followed it, is both a hilarious account of an incorrigible truant and a tremendous parable of innocence in conflict with the fallen adult world.