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The Collected Shorter Works of Mark Twain (boxed set)

Now in a collector’s boxed set, the most comprehensive edition 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. More

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

“Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand,” Mark Twain once wrote. A master of deadpan hilarity, a storyteller who fashioned an exuberant style rooted in 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.

Arranged chronologically and containing many pieces restored to the form in which Twain intended them to appear, this deluxe collector’s boxed set shows with unprecedented clarity his literary evolution over the six decades of his career. As a riverboat pilot, Confederate irregular, silver miner, frontier journalist, publisher, and internationally acclaimed author, Twain witnessed the tragicomic beginning of the Civil War in Missouri, the frenzied opening of the West, the feverish corruption, avarice, and ambition of the Gilded Age, and the rise of U.S. imperialism. 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. This is the quintessential Mark Twain.

Each Library of America series volume 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.

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 “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

Story of the Week Mark Twain, “Plymouth Rock and the Pilgrims”
November 24, 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

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: 9781598535280 2126 pages

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