Who Is Mark Twain?

Mark Twain

• Publisher: HarperCollins e-books
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN:
  9780061735011
• eBook ISBN:
  9780062020857
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Essays
• Index: Literature

Twenty-six wickedly funny, thought-provoking essays by the celebrated American author—"Twain's wit and lethally precise powers of description are on full display" (NPR).
"More than 100 years after [Twain] wrote these stories, they remain not only remarkably funny but remarkably modern. . . . Ninety-nine years after his death, Twain still manages to get the last laugh." — Vanity Fair
"You had better shove this in the stove," Mark Twain said at the top of an 1865 letter to his brother, "for I don't want any absurd 'literary remains' and 'unpublished letters of Mark Twain' published after I am planted." He was joking, of course. But when Mark Twain died in 1910, he left behind the largest collection of personal papers created by any nineteenth-century American author.  Who Is Mark Twain? presents twenty-six wickedly funny, disarmingly relevant pieces by the American master—a man who was well ahead of his time.
" Who Is Mark Twain? possesses one inestimable virtue: Its author is never dull. . . . At the heart of his work lies that greatest of all American qualities: irreverence." — Washington Post
"Worth reading for the sheer pleasure of rediscovering why this writer was so popular in his day." — Los Angeles Times

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• “Stacks of Literary Remains” A Note on the Text
• Whenever I Am about to Publish a Book
• Frank Fuller and My First New York Lecture
• Conversations with Satan
• Jane Austen
• The Force of “Suggestion”
• The Privilege of the Grave
• A Group of Servants
• The Quarrel in the Strong-Box
• Happy Memories of the Dental Chair
• Dr. Van Dyke as a Man and as a Fisherman
• On Postage Rates on Authors’ Manuscript
• The Missionary in World-Politics
• The Undertaker’s Tale
• The Music Box
• The Grand Prix
• The Devil’s Gate
• The Snow-Shovelers
• Professor Mahaffy on Equality
• Interviewing the Interviewer
• An Incident
• The Jungle Discusses Man
• I Rise to a Question of Privilege
• Telegraph Dog
• The American Press
• The Christening Yarn
• The Walt Whitman Controversy
• Discussion Guide
• About the Author
• Praise
• Other Books by Mark Twain
• Copyright
• About the Publisher