Clemens ∗pudd′nhead∗ Wilson & Those Extraordinary Twins (nce) (editor – Berger) (Norton Critical Editions) - Hardcover

CLEMENS, SE

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393013375 ISBN 13: 9780393013375

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Co., 1982

Synopsis

Webster's paperbacks take advantage of the fact that classics are frequently assigned readings in English courses. By using a running English-to-Bulgarian thesaurus at the bottom of each page, this edition of Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain was edited for three audiences. The first includes Bulgarian-speaking students enrolled in an English Language Program (ELP), an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) program, an English as a Second Language Program (ESL), or in a TOEFL or TOEIC preparation program. The second audience includes English-speaking students enrolled in bilingual education programs or Bulgarian speakers enrolled in English-speaking schools. The third audience consists of students who are actively building their vocabularies in Bulgarian in order to take foreign service, translation certification, Advanced Placement (AP) or similar examinations. By using the Webster's Bulgarian Thesaurus Edition when assigned for an English course, the reader can enrich their vocabulary in anticipation of an examination in Bulgarian or English.
TOEFL, TOEIC, AP and Advanced Placement are trademarks of the Educational Testing Service which has neither reviewed nor endorsed this book. All rights reserved.

About this title

About the Author

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, best known to his readers by his pen-name of Mark Twain, was born at Florida, Missouri, on 30th November 1835. After learning the trade of a printer and working as a pilot on the Mississippi, he eventually became a journalist in San Francisco. His Innocents Abroad (1869), the result of a foreign tour, had an enormous success, and thenceforward his reputation as a humourist was established. His subsequent books include Roughing It (1872), Tom Sawyer, A Tramp Abroad, The Prince and the Pauper, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The American Claimant, The £1,000,000 Bank-Note, Pudd'nhead Wilson, The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg, and A Double-Barrelled Detective Story (1902). His share in an unfortunate publishing house drove him to a lecturing tour round the world (1895-96), which enabled him fully to re-establish his fortunes. Mark Twain's humour has secured him a large audience not only in America and this country, but also in Germany and other Continental countries. It is the dry, incisive humour of a shrewd man of the world who, having gone through life with his eyes wide open, has cheered himself by laughing not merely at the faibles of his fellow-men, but, by implication, at his own as well. He is not very reverent in his attitude towards what he considers worn-out survivals of old beliefs and superstitions, and sometimes pokes fun without much discrimination, as in A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur and Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc; but when his humour is, as it generally is, at its best and freshest the result to his readers is delightful. In Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, perhaps, Mark Twain showed his power at its highest point, his humour and pathos developed with consummate ease and force in a succession of vividly adventurous episodes.

From the Inside Flap

At the beginning of "Pudd'nhead Wilson a young slave woman, fearing for her infant's son's life, exchanges her light-skinned child with her master's. From this rather simple premise Mark Twain fashioned one of his most entertaining, funny, yet biting novels. On its surface, "Pudd'nhead Wilson possesses all the elements of an engrossing nineteenth-century mystery: reversed identities, a horrible crime, an eccentric detective, a suspenseful courtroom drama, and a surprising, unusual solution. Yet it is not a mystery novel. Seething with the undercurrents of antebellum southern culture, the book is a savage indictment in which the real criminal is society, and racial prejudice and slavery are the crimes. Written in 1894, "Pudd'nhead Wilson glistens with characteristic Twain humor, with suspense, and with pointed irony: a gem among the author's later works.

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Co.
• Publication date: 1982
• ISBN 10: 0393013375
• ISBN 13: 9780393013375
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 400