The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson and the Comedy of Those Extraordinary Twins: And the Comedy, Those Extraordinary Twins (The Oxford Mark Twain) - Hardcover

Twain, Mark

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195101472 ISBN 13: 9780195101478

Publisher: OUP USA, 1997

Synopsis

Widely acknowledged as the greatest of his later works, this story of switched babies and slavery is Twain's darkest vision of race in America. It began life as a slapstick comedy about Siamese twins, but as he wrote, something deepened. "The tale kept spreading along, and spreading along, and other people got to intruding themselves and taking up more and more time with their talk and their affairs. It changed from a farce to a tragedy while I was going along with it," Twain wrote in his frank afternote to the novel. In the end, the voice that comes to dominate the tale is Roxana's, a light-skinned slave who switches her infant son with her master's son to keep him from being sold down the river. Roxana, Twain's most complex and fully-realized adult female character, is a compelling and memorable tragic heroine, trapped with her son by the brutal system of slavery and by their own inescapable racial identities. At his best, Twain is the most uniquely American of writers, and it is inevitable that his best work revolves around the issues of race and of slavery embedded in the American psyche. The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson is a dark and powerful novel of race in America, written by the American master.

About this title

Review:

"Mark Twain, in his presentation of Negroes as human beings, stands head and shoulders above the other Southern writers of his times." --Langston Hughes

About the Author:

Born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in 1835, Mark Twain spent his youth in Hannibal, Missouri, which forms the setting for his two greatest works, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Trying his hand at printing, typesetting and then gold-mining, the former steam-boat pilot eventually found his calling in journalism and travel writing. Dubbed 'the father of American literature' by William Faulkner, Twain died in 1910 after a colourful life of travelling, bankruptcy and great literary success.

About this edition

• Publisher: OUP USA
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0195101472
• ISBN 13: 9780195101478
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 512