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  • Published: 31 January 2017
  • ISBN: 9781598535280
  • Imprint: Library of America
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 2126
  • RRP: $215.00

The Collected Shorter Works of Mark Twain

A Library of America Boxed Set



For the first time in a collector's boxed set, the authoratative two-volume Library of America edition of Mark Twain's incomparable short writings -- the stories, sketches, burlesques, hoaxes, tall tales, speeches, satires, and maxims of America's greatest humorist.

"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.

Boxed set contains Mark Twain: Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, & Essays Vol. 1: 1852–1890, 1,076 pp., and Mark Twain: Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, & Essays Vol. 2: 1891–1910, 1,050 pp., volumes #60 and #61 in the Library of America series.

LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

  • Published: 31 January 2017
  • ISBN: 9781598535280
  • Imprint: Library of America
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 2126
  • RRP: $215.00

About the author

Mark Twain

Mark Twain's real name was Sam Clemens, and he was born in 1835 in a small town on the Mississippi, one of seven children. He smoked cigars at the age of eight, and aged nine he stowed away on a steamboat. He left school at 11 and worked at a grocery store, a bookstore, a blacksmith's and a newspaper, where he was allowed to write his own stories (not all of them true). He then worked on a steamboat, where he got the name 'Mark Twain' (from the call given by the boat's pilot when their boat is in safe waters). Eventually he turned to journalism again, travelled round the world, and began writing books which became very popular. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are his most famous novels. He poured the money he earned from writing into new business ventures and crazy inventions, such as a clamp to stop babies throwing off their bed covers, a new boardgame, and a hand grenade full of extinguishing liquid to throw on a fire. With his shock of white hair and trademark white suit Mark Twain became the most famous American writer in the world. He died in 1910.

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Praise for The Collected Shorter Works of Mark Twain

"These 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