A memoir of the steamboat era on the Mississippi River before the American Civil War. The first half details a brief history of the river from its discovery by Hernando de Soto in 1541 and describes Twain's career as a Mississippi steamboat pilot, the fulfillment of a childhood dream. The second half of Life on the Mississippi tells of Twain's return, many years after, to travel the river from St. Louis to New Orleans. By then the competition from...

Mark Twain's semi-autobiographical travel memoir, "Roughing It" was written between 1870-1871 and subsequently published in 1872. Billed as a prequel to "Innocents Abroad", in which Twain details his travels aboard a pleasure cruise through Europe and the Holy Land in 1867, "Roughing It" conversely documents Twain's early days in the old wild west between the years 1861-1867. Employing his characteristically humoristic wit and flare for regional dialect,...

When young Edward VI of England and a poor boy who resembles him exchange places, each learns something about the other's very different station in life.

The most hilarious, charming, and entertaining of Mark Twain's later works, The Diaries of Adam and Eve collects in one volume "Extracts from Adam's Diary," first published in 1904, and "Eve's Diary," published in 1906 after Olivia Clemens's death. Ultimately an endearing love story, the diaries record the couple's initial ambivalence toward each other. While Adam observes that Eve "has such a rage for explaining," she muses, "He talks very little....

Fearing for the safety of her young child's life, a young slave called Roxy swaps her light-skinned baby with that of her master. Her master's child grows up as a slave, while Roxy's child grows up as a white man called "Tom" who becomes cruel and ends up leading a life crime. The book is a cutting indictment of a society based on racial prejudice and slavery brimming with Twain's characteristic wit and irony. Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835—1910),...

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 title story of this collection of short gems by America's greatest humorist, published in 1900, tells of a man's attempt to gain revenge on the hypocritcal citizens of a supposedly "incorruptible" town. Other stories include "The Man Who Put Up at Gadsby's" and "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County."

Presents Mark Twain's authentic and unsuppressed voice, brimming with humor, ideas, and opinions, and speaking clearly from the grave as he intended.