Pudd'nhead Wilson - Softcover

Twain, Mark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0451530748 ISBN 13: 9780451530745

Publisher: Signet Classics, 2007

Synopsis

The American humorist's classic novel, depicting human nature under slavery, tells the story of two infants, one slave, one free, that were switched at birth. Reissue.

About this title

About the Author

In his person and in his pursuits, Mark Twain (1835-1910) was a man of extraordinary contrasts. Although he left school at twelve, when his father died, he was eventually awarded honorary degrees from Yale University, the University of Missouri, and Oxford University. His career encompassed such varied occupations as printer, Mississippi riverboat pilot, journalist, travel writer, and publisher. He made fortunes from his writing, but toward the end of his life he had to resort to lecture tours to pay his debts. He was hot-tempered, profane, and sentimental—and also pessimistic, cynical, and tortured by self-doubt. His nostalgia for the past helped produce some of his best books. He lives in American letters as a great artist, the writer whom William Dean Howells called "the Lincoln of our literature."

Louis Budd has written Mark Twain: Social Philosopher (1962) and Our Mark Twain: The Making of His Public Personality (1983). With Peter Messent, he edited A Companion to Mark Twain (2005). He was founding president of the Mark Twain Circle of America.

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.

Edition details

• Publisher: Signet Classics
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0451530748
• ISBN 13: 9780451530745
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 176