The Best Short Stories of Mark Twain
About this audiobook
Mark Twain was known as a great American short-story writer as well as novelist and humorist. This collection of eighteen of his best short stories, from the well known to the lesser known, displays his mastery of Western humor and frontier realism. The stories also show how Twain earned his place in American letters as a master writer in the authentic native idiom. He was exuberant and irreverent, but underlying the humor was a vigorous desire for social justice and equality.
Beginning the collection is Twain’s comic version of an old folk tale, “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog,” first published in 1865 in the New York Saturday Press. It became the title story of The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and Other Sketches, the work that established him as a leading American humorist.
Stories include:
1. “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog” 2. “The Story of the Bad Little Boy Who Didn’t Come to Grief” 3. “Cannibalism in the Cars” 4. “Journalism in Tennessee” 5. “The Story of the Good Little Boy Who Did Not Prosper” 6. “How I Edited an Agricultural Paper Once” 7. “Political Economy” 8. “A True Story, Repeated Word for Word as I Heard It” 9. “The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut” 10. “Punch, Brothers, Punch!” 11. “Jim Baker’s Blue-Jay Yarn” 12. “The Stolen White Elephant” 13. “The McWilliamses and the Burglar Alarm” 14. “The Private History of a Campaign That Failed” 15. “Extracts from Adam’s Diary” 16. “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg” 17. “The $30,000 Bequest” 18. “Eve’s Diary”
Ratings and reviews
About the author
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.
Robin Field is the AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator of numerous audiobooks, as well as an award-winning actor, singer, writer, and lyricist whose career has spanned six decades. He has starred on and off Broadway, headlined at Carnegie Hall, authored numerous musical reviews, and hosted or performed on a number of television and radio programs over the years.
