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Mark Twain: Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, & Essays 1891–1910

Edited by Louis J. Budd

“It’s a perfect combination, Mark Twain and The Library of America—one an American genius, the other dedicated to preserving the works of such homespun originals.” — Los Angeles Reader’s Monthly

Overview
News & Views
Table of Contents

Overview

Story of the Week Mark Twain, “Eve’s Diary”
November 30, 2022

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.

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,” 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, 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 complex 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 1891–1910 is kept in print by a gift to the Guardians of American Letters Fund from Rita Rogillio Odom, in memory of her husband Guy Roy Odom.
News & Views

Story of the Week Mark Twain, “Eve’s Diary”
November 30, 2022

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

1891
Aix-les-Bains
Playing Courier
Mental Telegraphy

1892
The Cradle of Liberty

1893
The L1,000,000 Bank-Note
About All Kinds of Ships
Extracts from Adam’s Diary
Is He Living or Is He Dead?
The Esquimau Maiden’s Romance
Travelling with a Reformer
Concerning Tobacco

1894
Private History of the “Jumping Frog” Story
Macfarlane

1895
What Paul Bourget Thinks of Us
Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offences
Fenimore Cooper’s Further Literary Offenses
How to Tell a Story

1896
Man’s Place in the Animal World

1897
In Memoriam
Which Was the Dream?

1898
A Word of Encouragement for Our Blushing Exiles
About Play-Acting
From the “London Times” of 1904
My Platonic Sweetheart
The Great Dark

1899
Diplomatic Pay and Clothes
Concerning the Jews
Christian Science and the Book of Mrs. Eddy
The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg
My First Lie and How I Got Out of It

1900
My Boyhood Dreams
Introducing Winston S. Churchill
A Salutation-Speech from the Nineteenth Century to the Twentieth, Taken Down in Short-Hand by Mark Twain

1901
To the Person Sitting in Darkness
Battle Hymn of the Republic (Brought Down to Date)
As Regards Patriotism
The United States of Lyncherdom
Edmund Burke on Croker and Tammany
Two Little Tales
Corn-Pone Opinions

1902
Does the Race of Man Love a Lord?
The Five Boons of Life
Was It Heaven? Or Hell?
The Dervish and the Offensive Stranger

1903
Why Not Abolish It?
Mark Twain, Able Yachtsman, on Why Lipton Failed to Lift the Cup
A Dog’s Tale
“Was the World Made for Man?”

1904
Italian Without a Master
Saint Joan of Arc
The $30,000 Bequest

1905
Concerning Copyright
Adam’s Soliloquy
The Czar’s Soliloquy
Dr. Loeb’s Incredible Discovery
The War Prayer
A Humane Word from Satan
Christian Citizenship
King Leopold’s Soliloquy: A Defense of His Congo Rule
A Helpless Situation
Overspeeding
In the Animal’s Court
Eve’s Diary
Eve Speaks
Seventieth Birthday Dinner Speech
Old Age

1906
The Gorky Incident
William Dean Howells
What Is Man?
Hunting the Deceitful Turkey

1907
Dinner Speech at Annapolis
Our Guest
The Day We Celebrate
Little Nelly Tells a Story Out of Her Own Head
Extract from Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven

1908
Little Bessie

1909
The New Planet
A Fable
Letters from the Earth

1910
“The Turning Point of My Life”

Appendix
More Maxims of Mark

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ISBN: 978-0-94045073-8 1050 pages

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N° 61 Library of America Series

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