Back Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, & Essays 1852–1890

Mark Twain: Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, & Essays 1852–1890

Edited by Louis J. Budd

“The sketches and stories are a national treasure. The Library of America ought to be commended for issuing them in an attractive edition.” — The Dallas Morning News

Overview
News & Views
Table of Contents

Overview

Story of the Week “Cannibalism in the Cars,” Mark Twain
November 30, 2023

Story of the Week Mark Twain, “How I Escaped Being Killed in a Duel”
November 30, 2021

Story of the Week Mark Twain, “The £1,000,000 Bank-Note”
December 8, 2020

Save $25 when you purchase both volumes of Mark Twain’s shorter works in a deluxe boxed set.

This Library of America book, 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.

The nearly two hundred 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 here are “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog,” which won him instant fame when published in 1865, “Cannibalism in the Cars,” “The Invalid’s Story,” and the charming “A Cat’s 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 desperadoes.

“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 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.

Louis J. Budd, volume editor, is emeritus professor of English at Duke University and the author of Our Mark Twain: The Making of His Public Personality.

This Library of America series edition is printed on acid-free paper and features Smyth-sewn binding, a full cloth cover, and a ribbon marker.

Mark Twain: Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, & Essays 1852–1890 is kept in print by a gift from Rita Rogillio Odom to the Guardians of American Letters Fund, made in memory of her aunt Madeleine Hammett Bianca.
News & Views

Story of the Week “Cannibalism in the Cars,” Mark Twain
November 30, 2023

Story of the Week Mark Twain, “How I Escaped Being Killed in a Duel”
November 30, 2021

Story of the Week Mark Twain, “The £1,000,000 Bank-Note”
December 8, 2020

Interviews Susan K. Harris: The round-the-world trip that made Mark Twain an anti-imperialist
March 31, 2020

Story of the Week Mark Twain, “Is He Living or Is He Dead?”
November 29, 2018
Table of Contents

1852
The Dandy Frightening the Squatter
Historical Exhibition—A No. 1 Ruse
Editorial Agility
Blabbing Government Secrets!

1859
River Intelligence

1861
Ghost Life on the Mississippi

1862
Petrified Man

1863
Letter from Carson City
Ye Sentimental Law Student
All About the Fashions
Letter from Steamboat Springs
How to Cure a Cold
The Lick House Ball
The Great Prize Fight
A Bloody Massacre Near Carson
“Ingomar” Over the Mountains

1864
Miss Clapp’s School
Doings in Nevada
Those Blasted Children
Washoe.—“Information Wanted”
The Evidence in the Case of Smith vs. Jones
Whereas
A Touching Story of George Washington’s Boyhood
The Killing of Julius Caesar “Localized”
Lucretia Smith’s Soldier

1865
Important Correspondence
Answers to Correspondents
Advice for Good Little Boys
Advice for Good Little Girls
Just “One More Unfortunate”
Real Estate versus Imaginary Possessions, Poetically Considered
Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog
“Mark Twain” on the Launch of the Steamer “Capital”
The Pioneers’ Ball
Uncle Lige
A Rich Epigram
Macdougall vs. Maguire
The Christmas Fireside

1866
Policeman’s Presents
What Have the Police Been Doing?
The Spiritual Seance
A New Biography of Washington
Reflections on the Sabbath

1867
Barnum’s First Speech in Congress
Female Suffrage: Views of Mark Twain
Female Suffrage
Official Physic
A Reminiscence of Artemus Ward
Jim Wolf and the Tom-Cats
Information Wanted
The Facts Concerning the Recent Resignation

1868
Woman—an Opinion
General Washington’s Negro Body-Servant
Colloquy Between a Slum Child and a Moral Mentor
My Late Senatorial Secretaryship
The Story of Mamie Grant, the Child-Missionary
Cannibalism in the Cars
Private Habits of Horace Greeley
Concerning Gen. Grant’s Intentions

1869
Open Letter to Com. Vanderbilt
Mr. Beecher and the Clergy
Personal Habits of the Siamese Twins
A Day at Niagara
A Fine Old Man
Journalism in Tennessee
The Last Words of Great Men
The Legend of the Capitoline Venus
Getting My Fortune Told
Back from “Yurrup”

1870
An Awful—Terrible Medieval Romance
A Mysterious Visit
The Facts in the Great Land-Slide Case
The New Crime
Curious Dream
About Smells
The Facts in the Case of the Great Beef Contract
The Story of the Good Little Boy Who Did Not Prosper
Disgraceful Persecution of a Boy
Misplaced Confidence
Our Precious Lunatic
A Couple of Sad Experiences
The Judge’s “Spirited Woman”
Breaking It Gently
Post-Mortem Poetry
Wit-Inspirations of the “Two-Year-Olds”
The Widow’s Protest
Report to the Buffalo Female Academy
How I Edited an Agricultural Paper Once
The “Tournament” in A.D. 1870
Unburlesquable Things
The Late Benjamin Franklin
A Memory
Domestic Missionaries Wanted
Political Economy
John Chinaman in New York
The Noble Red Man
The Approaching Epidemic
A Royal Compliment
Science vs. Luck
Goldsmith’s Friend Abroad Again
Map of Paris
Riley—Newspaper Correspondent
A Reminiscence of the Back Settlements
A General Reply
Running for Governor
Dogberry in Washington
My Watch—An Instructive Little Tale

1871
The Facts in the Case of George Fisher, Deceased
The Tone-Imparting Committee
The Danger of Lying in Bed
One of Mankind’s Bores
The Indignity Put upon the Remains of George Holland by the Rev. Mr. Sabine
A Substitute for Rulloff
About Barbers
A Brace of Brief Lectures on Science
The Revised Catechism

1872
The Secret of Dr. Livingston’s Continued Voluntary Exile
How I Escaped Being Killed in a Duel

1873
Poor Little Stephen Girard
Foster’s Case
License of the Press
Fourth of July Speech in London
The Ladies

1874
Those Annual Bills
The Temperance Insurrection
Rogers
A Curious Pleasure Excursion
A True Story, Repeated Word for Word as I Heard It
An Encounter with an Interviewer

1875
The “Jumping Frog.” In English. Then in French. Then clawed back into a civilized language once more, by patient, unremunerated toil.
Experience of the McWilliamses with Membranous Croup
Some Learned Fables for Good Old Boys and Girls
Petition Concerning Copyright
“Party Cries” in Ireland
The Curious Republic of Gondour

1876
A Literary Nightmare
The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut
[Date, 1601.] Conversation, as it Was by the Social Fireside, in the Time of the Tudors
The Canvasser’s Tale
The Oldest Inhabitant—The Weather of New England

1877
Francis Lightfoot Lee
My Military History
The Captain’s Story
The Invalid’s Story
Whittier Birthday Speech

1878
Farewell Banquet for Bayard Taylor
About Magnanimous-Incident Literature

1879
The Great Revolution in Pitcairn
Some Thought on the Science of Onanism
A Presidential Candidate
The Babies. As They Comfort Us in Our Sorrows, Let Us Not Forget Them in Our Festivities
The New Postal Barbarism
Postal Matters

1880
A Telephonic Conversation
Reply to a Boston Girl
Edward Mills and George Benton: A Tale
Mrs. McWilliams and the Lightning
“Millions In It”
A Cat Tale

1881
The Benefit of Judicious Training
Dinner Speech in Montreal
Plymouth Rock and the Pilgrims
Etiquette

1882
Advice to Youth
The Stolen White Elephant
On the Decay of the Art of Lying
Concerning the American Language
Woman—God Bless Her
The McWilliamses and the Burglar Alarm

1883
On Adam
Why a Statue of Liberty When We Have Adam!

1884
Turncoats
Mock Oration on the Dead Partisan

1885
The Character of Man
On Speech-Making Reform
The Private History of a Campaign that Failed

1886
The New Dynasty
Our Children
Taming the Bicycle

1887
Letter from the Recording Angel
Dinner Speech: General Grant’s Grammar
Consistency
Post-Prandial Oratory
A Petition to the Queen of England

1888
American Authors and British Pirates

1889
Yale College Speech
The Christening Yarn
To Walt Whitman

1890
On Foreign Critics
Reply to the Editor of “The Art of Authorship”
An Appeal Against Injudicious Swearing

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ISBN: 978-0-94045036-3 1076 pages

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