The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories

Mark Twain

Mar 2012 · Courier Corporation

About this ebook

The author of outstanding travel books, autobiographical works and novels, including the classic The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835–1910) is regarded by many as America's finest humorist and a major writer of short stories.
The four selections in this volume span his entire writing career and are among his best-known stories. They include: "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," one of Twain's most amusing pieces of folk humor, first published in 1865; "The £1,000,000 Bank Note," a lighthearted exploration of the power of money; "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg," a masterfully written short story about greed; and his last work, "The Mysterious Stranger," a novelette published posthumously in 1916, presenting Twain's rather grim views of God, man, and the universe.

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About the author

Mark Twain was born Samuel L. Clemens in Florida, Missouri on November 30, 1835. He worked as a printer for a time, and then became a steamboat pilot. He traveled in the West, writing humorous sketches for newspapers. In 1865, he wrote the short story, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, which was very well received. He then began a career as a humorous travel writer and lecturer, publishing The Innocents Abroad in 1869, Roughing It in 1872, and, co-authored with Charles Dudley Warner, Gilded Age in 1873. His best-known works are The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Mississippi Writing: Life on the Mississippi (1883), and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). He died of a heart attack on April 21, 1910.