Mark Twain

Mark Twain's Speeches have delighted audiences for over one hundred years. Filled with wit and wry observation, these speeches are enjoyable to read and excellent examples of the way to entertain and persuade a crowd.

This treasured historical satire, played out in two very different socioeconomic worlds of 16th-century England, centers around the lives of two boys born in London on the same day: Edward, Prince of Wales and Tom Canty, a street beggar. During a chance encounter, the two realize they are identical and, as a lark, decide to exchange clothes and roles--a situation that briefly, but drastically, alters the lives of both youngsters. The Prince, dressed in rags, wanders about the city's boisterous neighborhoods among the lower classes and endures a series of hardships; meanwhile, poor Tom, now living with the royals, is constantly filled with the dread of being discovered for who and what he really is.

The last story published by Twain, in 1909, tells of Captain Elias Stormfield's journey to heaven and his experiences there. This irreverent satire punctures conventional religious views of the afterlife and delivers a sharp critique of so-called human virtues-which are often humanity's own vanities in disguise.

The book details Twain's journey with his friend Harris through central and southern Europe. While the stated goal of the journey is to walk most of the way, the men find themselves using other forms of transport as they traverse the continent.

Though he is best known as a humorist, famed American author Mark Twain also tried his hand at social satires, to much critical and popular acclaim. In The American Claimant, Twain provides a thematic follow-up to his previous novel, The Prince and the Pauper, with a tale of an American con artist and a British aristocrat who essentially switch places and reveal the unsavory aspects of each lifestyle and social milieu.

The title story is Twain's darkly fantastic take on religion, reality, and the meaning of life. It takes place in 1590 in the remote Austrian village of Eseldorf, where few young boys greet an unexpected visitor: an angel named Satan. Among the six other stories included are "A Fable," "Hunting the Deceiful Turkey," and "The McWilliamses and the Burglar Alarm."

1601 was written by Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) originally published privately for a small group of friends. This book is a humorous satire of Elizabethan England, probably scandalous at the time of its release.

Written for the Atlantic magazine in 1877, this is a collection of stories about a trip Mark Twain made with some friends to Bermuda.

Before his literary career took off and he emerged as one of America's foremost men of letters, Mark Twain worked as a steamboat pilot in the antebellum South and Midwest. This fascinating account offers a brief history of commercial boating in the period and a probing, insightful, and eminently entertaining look at Twain's own experiences.

"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..." One of the earliest and greatest Americans to bring animal welfare to public attention, this 1907 story sends up the tall tale, among other things.

The humorist takes on the controversy over the authorship of Shakespeare's plays in this 1909 essay, one of the last published in his lifetime. Twain argues that the man from Stratford could not have written the plays, because he lacked the education and was not famous in his home town, as Twain was in Hannibal, Missouri.

The only book that Mark Twain ever wrote in collaboration with another author, The Gilded Age is a novel that viciously and hilariously satirizes the greed, materialism, and corruption that characterized much of upper-class America in the nineteenth century. The title term - inspired by a line in Shakespeare's King John - has become synonymous with the excess of the era.

Known as one of American literature's finest humor writers, Mark Twain took on the travel genre in the series of essays, sketches, and observations collected in The Innocents Abroad. From classic fish-out-of-water shenanigans to keen insight into the differences between American culture and its European and Middle Eastern counterparts, this volume is an engaging and rewarding read.

Mark Twain's work on Joan of Arc is titled in full Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, by the Sieur Louis de Conte who is identified further as Joan's page and secretary. The work is fictionally presented as a translation from the manuscript by Jean Francois Alden, or, in the words of the published book, "Freely Translated out of the Ancient French into Modern English from the Original Unpublished Manuscript in the National Archives of France". De Conte is a fictionalized version of Joan of Arc's page Louis de Contes, and provides narrative unity to the story. He is presented as an individual who was with Joan during the three major phases of her life - as a youth in Domremy, as the commander of Charles' army on military campaign, and as a defendant at the trial in Rouen.

The novel centers on the mischievous orphan Tom Sawyer, who lives in the quaint village of St. Petersburg, Missouri under the care of his kind Aunt Polly along with his ill-natured brother Sid and angelic cousin Mary. As a collection of stories, the novel is loosely structured, but follows the arc of Tom's transformation from a rebellious boy who longs to escape authority to a responsible community member committed to respectability. Tom's first adventure occurs as a result of him playing hooky, stealing snacks, sneaking in late, and various other misdeeds. As punishment, Aunt Polly tells him to whitewash her fence on a Saturday. Tom convinces his friends that whitewashing the fence is actually a privilege, and gets them to not only do the work for him but to pay him with various trinkets for the opportunity. On his way home he develops a crush on the new girl in town, Becky Thatcher.

"The Stolen White Elephant" is a short story written by Mark Twain and published in 1882. 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.

Curl up with a collection of stories from the pen of one of the masters of American fiction and humor writing. This carefully curated volume of Twain's short stories represents a cross-section of some the author's finest work, including the title piece, which follows a stranger's plot to corrupt a purportedly honest community.

The printed books from Literary Domain Publishing are made on white quality paper with the size of 6"x9" - with a comfortable font size of 10. Most of the books by Literary Domain Publishing are Public Domain and are "re-published" in order to make the books more readily available to the modern era in a quality and standard size of 6"x9" to "look good" in a bookshelf (instead of a "hodge-podge" of sizes). A commentary is usually supplied so a reader can quickly pre-view to see if it is worthwhile to invest the time in reading the book. It also gives an accurate book review by a qualified source or reader.

When you dive into Mark Twain's (Samuel Clemens') The Innocents Abroad, you have to be ready to learn more about the unadorned, ungilded reality of 19th century "touring" than you might think you want to learn. This is a tough, literary journey. It was tough for Twain and his fellow "pilgrims", both religious and otherwise. They set out, on a June day in 1867, to visit major tourist sites in Europe and the near east, including Greece, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, "the Holy Land", and Egypt. What Twain records, in often humorous, sometimes grotesque but always fascinating detail, are the day-to-day ups and downs of discovering the truth about people and places. The truths they learn are often far different than their education and rumor have made them preconceive. This is a voyage of discovery. It's long and, in places, tiresome. But it's revelatory about so much. As with some of his other works, Twain includes popular prejudices of his time, which are today considered socially unacceptable. His references to "Indians", "Negroes" and "infidels" come to mind. Beyond the lows, though, there are the highs of Twain's cutting wit and insight as he guides us along the bumpy and often dangerous voyage. No need to buckle up. Just take it slow, and steady...like the journey itself.