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Mark Twain's humorous account of his six years in Nevada, San Francisco, and the Sandwich Islands is a patchwork of personal anecdotes and tall tales, many of them told in the "e;vigorous new vernacular"e; of the West. Selling seventy five thousand copies within a year of its publication in 1872, Roughing It was greeted as a work of "e;wild, preposterous invention and sublime exaggeration"e; whose satiric humor made "e;pretension and false dignity ridiculous."e; Meticulously restored from a variety of original sources, the text is the first to adhere to the author's wishes in thousands of details of wording, spelling, and punctuation, and includes all of the 304 first-edition illustrations. With its comprehensive and illuminating notes and supplementary materials, which include detailed maps tracing Mark Twain's western travels, this Mark Twain Library Roughing It must be considered the standard edition for readers and students of Mark Twain.

"Adventures of Huckleberry Finn".

A Connecticut Yankee is Mark Twain's most ambitious work, a tour de force with a science-fiction plot told in the racy slang of a Hartford workingman, sparkling with literary hijinks as well as social and political satire. Mark Twain characterized his novel as "e;one vast sardonic laugh at the trivialities, the servilities of our poor human race."e; The Yankee, suddenly transported from his native nineteenth-century America to the sleepy sixth-century Britain of King Arthur and the Round Table, vows brashly to "e;boss the whole country inside of three weeks."e; And so he does. Emerging as "e;The Boss,"e; he embarks on an ambitious plan to modernize Camelot-with unexpected results.

This is the only authoritative text of this late novel. It reproduces the manuscript which Mark Twain wrote last, and the only one he finished or called the "e;The Mysterious Stranger."e; Albert Bigelow Paine's edition of the same name has been shown to be a textual fraud.

"e;What am I writing? A historical tale of 300 years ago, simply for the love of it."e; Mark Twain's "e;tale"e; became his first historical novel, The Prince and the Pauper, published in 1881. Intricately plotted, it was intended to have the feel of history even though it was only the stuff of legend. In sixteenth-century England, young Prince Edward (son of Henry VIII) and Tom Canty, a pauper boy who looks exactly like him, are suddenly forced to change places. The prince endures "e;rags & hardships"e; while the pauper suffers the "e;horrible miseries of princedom."e; Mark Twain called his book a "e;tale for young people of all ages,"e; and it has become a classic of American literature. The first edition in 1881 was fully illustrated by Frank Merrill, John Harley, and L. S. Ipsen. The boys in these illustrations, Mark Twain said, "e;look and dress exactly as I used to see them cast in my mind. . . . It is a vast pleasure to see them cast in the flesh, so to speak."e; This Mark Twain Library edition exactly reproduces the text of the California scholarly edition, including all of the 192 illustrations that so pleased the author.

o Includes the authoritative texts for eleven pieces written between 1868 and 1902o Publishes, for the first time, the complete text of "e;Villagers of 1840-3,"e; Mark Twain's astounding feat of memoryo Features a biographical directory and notes that reflect extensive new research on Mark Twain's early life in MissouriThroughout his career, Mark Twain frequently turned for inspiration to memories of his youth in the Mississippi River town of Hannibal, Missouri. What has come to be known as the Matter of Hannibal inspired two of his most famous books, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, and provided the basis for the eleven pieces reprinted here. Most of these selections (eight of them fiction and three of them autobiographical) were never completed, and all were left unpublished. Written between 1868 and 1902, they include a diverse assortment of adventures, satires, and reminiscences in which the characters of his own childhood and of his best-loved fiction, particularly Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, come alive again. The autobiographical recollections culminate in an astounding feat of memory titled "e;Villagers of 1840-3"e; in which the author, writing for himself alone at the age of sixty-one, recalls with humor and pathos the characters of some one hundred and fifty people from his childhood. Accompanied by notes that reflect extensive new research on Mark Twain's early life in Missouri, the selections in this volume offer a revealing view of Mark Twain's varied and repeated attempts to give literary expression to the Matter of Hannibal.

These unjustly neglected works, among the most enjoyable of Mark Twain's novels, follow Tom, Huck, and Jim as they travel across the Atlantic in a balloon, then down the Mississippi to help solve a mysterious crime. Both with the original illustrations by Dan Beard and A.B. Frost."e;Do you reckon Tom Sawyer was satisfied after all them adventures? No, he wasn't. It only just pisoned him for more."e; So Huck declares at the start of these once-celebrated but now little-known sequels to his own adventures. Tom, Huck, and Jim set sail to Africa in a futuristic air balloon, where they survive encounters with lions, robbers, and fleas and see some of the world's greatest wonders.

Includes maps of the Mississippi River valley, explanatory notes, glossary, and several documentary appendixes such as Twain's literary working notes, facsimile manuscript pages, facsimile reproductions of the author's revisions for his public reading tours, and contemporary advertisements and announcements.

"This definitive edition of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, one of the world's best-loved books, was the first version since the original publication to be based directly on the author's manuscript. It includes all of the '200 rattling pictures' Mark Twain commissioned from one of his favorite illustrators, True W. Williams. Prepared by the Mark Twain Papers, the official archive of Sam Clemens's papers at the University of California, Berkeley, this volume also contains a wealth of helpful explanatory notes, along with a selection of original documents by Mark Twain, including several letters in his inimitable voice about writing Tom Sawyer and about its original publication--everything the discerning reader needs to enjoy this classic of American literature again and again"--Back cover.

This landmark anniversary edition contains a selection of Twain's hard-to-find letters and notes expressing his always-engaging opinions on the publication of Tom Sawyer.