Showing results by author "Mark Twain" in All Categories

"What Is Man?", the 1906 essay by Mark Twain, is a dialogue between a young man and an older man involving ideas of destiny, free will, and egoism. The old man asserts that the human being is merely a machine, but the young man objects and asks him to go into particulars and provide the reasons for his attitude.

Twain's classic novel tells the story of a teenaged misfit who finds himself floating on a raft down the Mississippi River with an escaping slave, Jim. In the course of their perilous journey, Huck and Jim meet adventure, danger, and a cast of characters who are sometimes menacing and often hilarious. Underlying Twain's good humor is a dark subcurrent of Antebellum cruelty and injustice that makes The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn a frequently funny book with a serious message.

One evening in Paris, 1879, Mark Twain rose to the podium and tackled the touchiest of subjects: masturbation. His remarks rubbed Victorian society the wrong way and were censored for over a century.

According to an LA Times, May 14, 2014 article, the following entry came from a notebook of a gold-seeking prospector, Samuel Clemens, in 1864. "Coleman with his jumping frog - bet stranger $50... - stranger had no frog & C got him one - in the meantime stranger filled C's frog full of shot and he couldn't jump - the stranger's frog won." Little did Clemens know that this would be the source for his short story that would launch his career as one of America's greatest authors.

An enthralling collection of creepy and mysterious stories. From classic detective stories to spine-tingling horror and scary ghost stories, these tales will make your flesh crawl.... 1. 'A Ghost Story' by Mark Twain. 2. 'The Silver Mask' by Hugh Walpole. 3. 'The Cactus' by O. Henry. 4. 'Dead of Night' by W. F. Harvey. 5. 'The Terrible Old Man' by H. P. Lovecraft. 6. 'Rattle of Bones' by Robert E. Howard. 7. 'The Last Leaf' by O. Henry. 8. 'The Magnet' by Barry Pain. 9. 'Pickman’s Model' by H. P. Lovecraft.

本有声书收录了马克・吐温19篇中短篇小说，其中以《百万英镑》、《竞选州长》、《加利福尼亚人的故事》等最富盛名……本有聲書收錄了馬克・吐溫19篇中短篇小說，其中以《百萬英鎊》、《競選州長》、《加利福尼亞人的故事》等最富盛名……

Set in 1547, "The Prince and the Pauper" tells the story of two young boys who are identical in appearance: Tom Canty, a pauper who lives with his abusive father in Offal Court off Pudding Lane in London, and Prince Edward, son of King Henry VIII. Tom, the youngest boy in a poor family living in London, has always aspired to a better life, encouraged by the local priest. Loitering around the palace gates one day, he sees the Prince Edward of Wales. Tom is nearly caught and beaten by the Royal Guards, but Edward stops them and invites Tom into his palace chamber.

"A Horse's Tale" (1907) is a novel by Mark Twain, written against bullfighting. A classic humorous tale as told from the point of view of horse in the wild, wild west. "I am Buffalo Bill's horse. I have spent my life under his saddle - with him in it, too, and he is good for two hundred pounds, without his clothes; and there is no telling how much he does weigh when he is out on the war-path and has his batteries belted on. I am his favorite horse, out of dozens.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is one of the first great American novels. The book is noted for its innocent young protagonist, its colorful description of people and places along the Mississippi River, and its sober and often scathing look at the entrenched attitudes, particularly racism, of the time. The journey of Huck and his friend Jim, a runaway slave, down the Mississippi River on their raft may be one of the most enduring images of escape and freedom in all of American literature.

An ingenious Yankee mechanic, knocked unconscious in a fight, awakens to find himself in Camelot in 528 A.D. Imprisoned by Sir Kay the Seneschal and exhibited before the knights of the Round Table, he is condemned to death but saves himself by posing as a Merlin-like magician, correctly predicting an eclipse, and becoming a minister to King Arthur. He increases his power by applying 19th century knowledge of gunpowder, electricity, and industrial methods.

A gripping collection of outstanding American classic short stories by some of America's greatest writers: 'A Ghost Story' by Mark Twain; 'Pomegranate Seed' by Edith Wharton; 'Pigeons from Hell' by Robert E. Howard; 'Pickman's Model' by H. P. Lovecraft; 'The Adventure of the German Student' by Nathaniel Hawthorne; 'Absolute Zero' by Morgan Robertson; and many more.

A town that prides itself on its honesty finds itself severely tested. One of the demons Mark Twain always set out to slay was the myth that the citizens of the American republic are inherently more virtuous than others. By the invention of an elaborate hoax, a kind of giant practical joke, Twain has his hero turn the town of Hadleyburg inside out and, in the process, teach the hypocrites who dwell there a lesson in humility and moral realism.

Europe and Elsewhere is a collection of Mark Twain's short stories and essays published in 1923. It is a must-listen for any Samuel Langhorn Clemens aficionado.

Transported 1300 years into the past, Connecticut engineer Hank Morgan finds himself in Camelot, the legendary home of King Arthur and his fabled Knights of the Round Table. Becoming a friend and adviser to the king, Hank encounters Merlin, Lancelot, Guinevere, and all the other characters from Arthurian legend. As he attempts to take on the task of analyzing the problems of their time, he tries to share his knowledge from the future in order to modernize, Americanize, and improve the lives of the people he meets.

The Mysterious Stranger is a novel attempted by the American author Mark Twain. He worked on it intermittently from 1897 through 1908. Twain wrote multiple versions of the story; each involves a supernatural character called "Satan" or "No. 44". All the versions remained unfinished (with the debatable exception of the last one, No. 44, the Mysterious Stranger). In 1590, three boys, Theodor, Seppi, and Nikolaus, live relatively happy simple lives in a remote Austrian village called Eseldorf (German for "Assville" or "Donkeytown").

Back in the mid-1980s when I was teaching in Warren College at the University of California, San Diego, we were required to use Mark Twain's famous book, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, in our classes. However, we were cautioned beforehand that certain words that were in common usage in the 19th century (such as the n-word) were no longer acceptable either in speech or print today.

"The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" is an 1865 short story by Mark Twain. It was his first great success as a writer and brought him national attention. The story has also been published as "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog" (its original title) and "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County". In it, the narrator retells a story he heard from a bartender, Simon Wheeler, at the Angels Hotel in Angels Camp, California, about the gambler Jim Smiley.

Who wants to live in a house, wear clean clothes, be good, and go to school every day? Not young Huckleberry Finn, that’s for sure.So Huck runs away, and is soon floating down the great Mississippi River on a raft. With him is Jim, a black slave who is also running away. But life is not always easy for the two friends. And there’s 300 dollars waiting for anyone who catches poor Jim.

Seventeen of Twain's best-loved and funniest shorter works, including "The Jumping Frog of Calavarous County", "The Story of Old Ram", "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses", "Tom Quartz", and "The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut". Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens on November 30, 1835 in Florida, Missouri. He grew up in the Mississippi River town of Hannibal. Sam was to be a printer, a river boat pilot, an officer in the Confederacy, a silver prospector and a journalist. He once wrote, "To simply amuse would have satisfied my dearest ambition".

This once-celebrated sequel of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn picks up right where Tom, Huck, and Jim's travels along the Mississippi ended. Tom enjoys his status as "Tom Sawyer the Traveler" and hopes to further his reputation. Little does he know how far his desire to stay ahead of his biggest rival will take them this time - overseas in an eccentric inventor's balloon!