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"Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand," Mark Twain once wrote. In this sixth volume in The Library of America's authoritative collection of his writings-the final volume of his fiction-America's greatest humorist emerges in a surprising range of roles: as the savvy satirist of The Gilded Age, the brilliant plotter of its inventive sequel, The American Claimant, and, in two Tom Sawyer novels, as the acknowledged master revisiting his best-loved characters. Also in this volume is the authoritative version of Twain's haunting last novel, No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger, left unpublished when he died.

The Gilded Age (1873), a collaboration with Hartford neighbor Charles Dudley Warner, sends up an age when vast fortunes piled up amid thriving corruption and a city Twain knew well, Washington, D.C., full of would-be power brokers and humbug. The novel also gives us one of Twain's most enduring characters, Colonel Sellers, who returns in The American Claimant (1892), an encore performance that moves beyond the worldly satire of its predecessor into realms of sheer inventive mayhem.

Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894) and Tom Sawyer, Detective (1896) extend the adventures of Huck and Tom. No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger (1908), an astonishing psychic adventure set in the gothic gloom of a medieval Austrian village, offers a powerful and uncanny exploration of the powers of the human mind..
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If any one writer stands at the heart of American literature it is Mark Twain. With his wild head of hair, thick mustache, and brilliant white suit, he is more recognizable than any living writer, and in his time he was, as he himself put it, "the most conspicuous person on the planet." He is certainly America's most popular writer--arguably the most popular American writer the world over--and the greatest humorist we have ever known, a marvelous teller of tall tales, a genial entertainer, a consistently quotable sage. He is also one of our finest satirists, who penned withering attacks on hypocrisy and corruption (he once said he wrote with "a pen warmed up in hell") and in his most serious works, such as Huckleberry Finn and Pudd'nhead Wilson, he cast a profound light on the darkest recesses of the nation's psyche.
The twenty-nine-volume Oxford Mark Twain is a major literary event. In addition to gathering together a superb collection of Twain's works, editor Shelley Fisher Fishkin has commissioned some of our most eminent living writers to introduce each volume with their personal insights and experiences of Twain. Readers will find, for instance, Toni Morrison reflecting on Huckleberry Finn, Kurt Vonnegut on Connecticut Yankee, Arthur Miller on Twain's Autobiography, Roy Blount Jr. on The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, E.L. Doctorow on Tom Sawyer, Willie Morris on Life on the Mississippi, Garry Wills on Christian Science, and Cynthia Ozick on The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories and Essays. Other writers include Gore Vidal, Ursula K. Le Guin, George Plimpton, Ward Just, Russell Banks, Bobbie Ann Mason, Malcolm Bradbury, Nat Hentoff, Sherley Anne Williams, Justin Kaplan, Walter Mosley, Erica Jong, Judith Martin ("Miss Manners"), David Bradley, Frederick Pohl, Mordecai Richler, Lee Smith, Anne Bernays, Charles Johnson, Fred Busch, and actor Hal Holbrook (who introduces Twain's collected speeches). And each volume includes an afterword by a noted scholar--such as Louis J. Budd, Victor A. Doyno, Leslie A. Fiedler, James A. Miller, Linda Wagner-Martin, Forrest Robinson, M. Thomas Inge, Fred Kaplan, Susan Harris, and David L. Smith--who place the work in the context of Twain's career and the literary and social climate of the time. In effect, the set gathers together an literary who's who, all of whom reflect on what Mark Twain's work means to them as writers and scholars, and what he means to our literary history and to our culture as a whole. Taken together, these introductions and afterwords provide a major reevaluation of Twain, allowing readers to see his work in fresh ways.
But of course the most important thing is the work itself. Here is the full range of Twain's remarkably prolific career, including The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, The Innocents Abroad, Roughing It, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, A Tramp Abroad, The Prince and the Pauper, Life on the Mississippi, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson, The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg, The Million Pound Banknote, Following the Equator, and Extracts from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven. Readers will find freewheeling parodies and burlesques, Twain's inimitable travel pieces, rich and complex portraits of childhood along the Mississippi, ghost stories and detective stories, irreverent lampoons of corrupt politicians, dark ruminations on the nature of humanity, and sharp-tongued editorials on the events of his day (such as Belgian imperialism in Africa or anti-Semitism in Vienna). Many of the works included here--such as Sketches, New and Old, A Tramp Abroad, The American Claimant, Is Shakespeare Dead? and Joan of Arc--have not been readily available for decades.
Equally important, The Oxford Mark Twain is a facsimile of the first American editions of Twain's work, and includes all the original illustrations, some of which were drawn by Twain himself, and many of which have not been seen since these editions went out of print. Moreover, in each volume containing art, Fishkin has commissioned an essay on that volume's illustrations and the artists responsible. Captivating in themselves, these illustrations add an extra dimension to the narratives that has been missing for a hundred years. Each volume also includes, as its frontispiece, a specially selected photo of Twain around the age he was when he wrote the book at hand.
The Oxford Mark Twain is an unprecedented undertaking and a cause for celebration. Colorful, irreverent, romantic, skeptical, a master of comic asides, a bittersweet humorist, and an unflinching critic of human pretensions, Mark Twain speaks to us across time with verve and wisdom. Combining the works themselves, reflections on Twain by some of our leading writers and scholars, and the original illustrations--all at a very affordable price--this superb twenty-nine-volume set will be treasured by everyone..
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2 Classics by Mark Twain in one file: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. 561 pages..
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"The American Claimant is enormous fun. I'm here to celebrate the mad energy of this strange novel. In it we have the pleasure of seeing Mark Twain's imagination go berserk," writes Bobbie Ann Mason in her introduction. The American Claimant is a comedy of mistaken identities and multiple role switches--fertile and familiar Mark Twain territory. Its cast of characters include an American enamored of British hereditary aristocracy and a British earl entranced by American democracy. The central character, Colonel Mulberry Sellers, is an irrepressible, buoyant mad scientist, Mason writes, "brimming with harebrained ideas. Nothing is impossible for him.... He's totally loopy." His voluble wackiness leaves the reader reeling in the wake of inventions that prefigure DNA cloning, fax machines, and photocopiers. Twain uses this over-the-top comic frame to explore some serious issues as well--such as the construction of self and identity, the role of the press in society, and the moral and social questions raised by capitalism and industrialization in the United States. A unique melange of science fiction and fantasy, romance, farce, and political satire, Twain's least-known comic novel is both thought-provoking and entertaining..
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For deft plotting, riotous inventiveness, unforgettable characters, and language that brilliantly captures the lively rhythms of American speech, no American writer comes close to Mark Twain. This sparkling anthology covers the entire span of Twain’s inimitable yarn-spinning, from his early broad comedy to the biting satire of his later years.

Every one of his sixty stories is here: ranging from the frontier humor of “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” to the bitter vision of humankind in “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg,” to the delightful hilarity of “Is He Living or Is He Dead?” Surging with Twain’s ebullient wit and penetrating insight into the follies of human nature, this volume is a vibrant summation of the career of–in the words of H. L. Mencken–“the father of our national literature.”.
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INTRODUCTION

_Alexander Jessup_

THE LITTLE FRENCHMAN AND HIS WATER LOTS (1839)

_George Pope Morris_

THE ANGEL OF THE ODD (1844)

_Edgar Allan Poe_

THE SCHOOLMASTER'S PROGRESS (1844)

_Caroline M.S. Kirkland_

THE WATKINSON EVENING (1846)

_Eliza Leslie_

TITBOTTOM'S SPECTACLES (1854)

_George William Curtis_

MY DOUBLE; AND HOW HE UNDID ME (1859)

_Edward Everett Hale_

A VISIT TO THE ASYLUM FOR AGED AND DECAYED PUNSTERS (1861)

_Oliver Wendell Holmes_

THE CELEBRATED JUMPING FROG OF CALAVERAS COUNTY (1865)

_Mark Twain_

ELDER BROWN'S BACKSLIDE (1885)

_Harry Stillwell Edwards_

THE HOTEL EXPERIENCE OF MR. PINK FLUKER (1886)

_Richard Malcolm Johnston_

THE NICE PEOPLE (1890)

_Henry Cuyler Bunner_

THE BULLER-PODINGTON COMPACT (1897)

_Frank Richard Stockton_

COLONEL STARBOTTLE FOR THE PLAINTIFF (1901)

_Bret Harte_

THE DUPLICITY OF HARGRAVES (1902)

_O. Henry_

BARGAIN DAY AT TUTT HOUSE (1905)

_George Randolph Chester_

A CALL (1906)

_Grace MacGowan Cooke_

HOW THE WIDOW WON THE DEACON (1911)

_William James

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