The tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson

Author: Twain, Mark

Brand: Signet

Color: Tan

Edition: Reissue

Binding: Mass Market Paperback

Number Of Pages: 175

Release Date: 04-12-2007

Part Number: 9780451530745

Details: Product Description


Mark Twain takes a hard look at the consequences of slavery in America in this classic satire. 

Set in a town on the Mississippi during the pre-Civil War era,
Pudd’nhead Wilson tackles the seminal American issue of slavery in a tragicomedy of switched identities. What happens when a child born free and a child born a slave change places?  The result is a biting social commentary with enduring relevance, and a good old-fashioned murder mystery. It also introduces one of Twain’s favorite characters: Pudd’nhead Wilson, an intellectual with a penchant for amateur sleuthing. F.R. Leavis proclaimed this novel “the masterly work of a great writer.”


With an Introduction by Louis Budd


Review


“He is a man of force...a blacksmith who stands at his anvil with the fire burning and strikes hard and hits the mark every time.”—Maxim Gorky


From the Back Cover


Featuring the brilliantly drawn Roxanna, a mulatto slave who suffers dire consequences after switching her infant son with her master's baby, and the clever Pudd'nhead Wilson, an ostracized small-town lawyer, Twain's darkly comic masterpiece is a provocative exploration of slavery and miscegenation. Leslie A. Fiedler described the novel as "half melodramatic detective story, half bleak tragedy," noting that "morally, it is one of the most honest books in our literature." "Those Extraordinary Twins, the slapstick story that evolved into Pudd'nhead Wilson, provides a fascinating view of the author's process.
The text for this Modern Library Paperback Classic was set from the 1894 first American edition.


About the Author


In his person and in his pursuits,
Mark Twain (1835-1910) was a man of extraordinary contrasts. Although he left school at twelve, when his father died, he was eventually awarded honorary degrees from Yale University, the University of Missouri, and Oxford University. His career encompassed such varied occupations as printer, Mississippi riverboat pilot, journalist, travel writer, and publisher. He made fortunes from his writing, but toward the end of his life he had to resort to lecture tours to pay his debts. He was hot-tempered, profane, and sentimental—and also pessimistic, cynical, and tortured by self-doubt. His nostalgia for the past helped produce some of his best books. He lives in American letters as a great artist, the writer whom William Dean Howells called "the Lincoln of our literature."
Louis Budd has written
Mark Twain: Social Philosopher (1962) and
Our Mark Twain: The Making of His Public Personality (1983). With Peter Messent, he edited
A Companion to Mark Twain (2005). He was founding president of the Mark Twain Circle of America.


Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.


CHAPTER I

PUDD'NHEAD WINS HIS NAME



Tell the truth or trump–but get the trick.–pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.


THE SCENE of this chronicle is the town of Dawson's Landing, on the Missouri side of the Mississippi, half a day's journey, per steamboat, below St. Louis.

In 1830 it was a snug little collection of modest one and two-story frame dwellings whose whitewashed exteriors were almost concealed from sight by climbing tangles of rose vines, honeysuckles, and morning-glories. Each of these pretty homes had a garden in front fenced with white palings, and opulently stocked with hollyhocks, marigolds, touch-me-nots, prince's-feathers, and other old-fashioned flowers; while on the window-sills of the houses stood wooden boxes containing moss-rose plants and terra-cotta pots in which grew a breed of geranium whose spread of intensely red blossoms accented the prevailing pink tint of the rose-clad house-front like an explosion of flame. When there was room on the ledge outside of the pots and boxes for a cat, the cat was there--in sunny weather--stretched at full length, asleep and blissful, with her furry belly to the sun and a paw curved over her nose. Then that house was complete, and its contentment and peace were made manifest t

EAN: 9780451530745

Package Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.3 x 0.7 inches

Languages: English