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1601 - Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors
by Mark TwainConversation, as it was by the Social Fireside, in the Time of the Tudors. or simply 1601 is the title of a short risqu? squib by Mark Twain, first published anonymously in 1880, and finally acknowledged by the author in 1906. Written as an extract from the diary of one of Queen Elizabeth I's ladies-in-waiting, the pamphlet purports to record a con..
The $30,000 Bequest, and Other Stories
by Mark TwainThe $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories (1906) is a collection of thirty comic short stories by the iconic American humorist and writer Mark Twain. The stories contained span the course of his career, from "Advice to Young Girls" in 1865 to the titular tale in 1904. Although Twain had ample time to refine his short stories between their original publ..
The Stolen White Elephant
by Mark TwainThe Stolen White Elephant is a short story written by Mark Twain and published in 1882 by James R. Osgood. In this detective mystery, a Siamese white elephant, en route from Siam to Britain as a gift to the Queen, disappears in New Jersey. The local police department goes into high gear to solve the mystery but it all comes to a tragic end...
Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences
by Mark TwainFenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses is an 1895 essay by Mark Twain, written as a satire and criticism of the writings of James Fenimore Cooper. Drawing on examples from The Deerslayer and The Pathfinder from Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales, the essay claims Cooper is guilty of verbose writing, poor plotting, glaring inconsistencies, overused clich?s..
Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven
by Mark TwainWell, when I had been dead about thirty years I begun to get a little anxious. Mind you, had been whizzing through space all that time, like a comet. Like a comet! Why, Peters, I laid over the lot of them! Of course there warn?t any of them going my way, as a steady thing, you know, because they travel in a long circle like the loop of a lasso,..
Is Shakespeare Dead
by Mark TwainIs Shakespeare Dead? is a short, semi-autobiographical work by American humorist Mark Twain. It explores the controversy over the authorship of the Shakespearean literary canon via satire, anecdote, and extensive quotation of contemporary authors on the subject...
On the Decay of the Art of Lying
by Mark TwainOn the Decay of the Art of Lying is a short essay written by Mark Twain in 1880 for a meeting of the Historical and Antiquarian Club of Hartford, Connecticut. Twain published the text in The Stolen White Elephant Etc. (1882). In the essay, Twain laments the four ways in which men of America's Gilded Age employ man's 'most faithful friend'. He concl..
Chapters from My Autobiography
by Mark TwainAutobiography of Mark Twain or Mark Twain?s Autobiography refers to a lengthy set of reminiscences, dictated, for the most part, in the last few years of American author Mark Twain's life and left in typescript and manuscript at his death. The Autobiography comprises a rambling collection of anecdotes and ruminations rather than a conventional auto..