Pudd'nhead Wilson - Softcover

Twain, Mark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1420956434 ISBN 13: 9781420956436

Publisher: Digireads.com Publishing, 2017

Synopsis

First serialized in “The Century Magazine” between 1893 and 1894, Mark Twain’s “Pudd’nhead Wilson” is a murder mystery set before the American Civil War in Missouri, more specifically, on the Mississippi River. During infancy, a light-skinned black baby and a white-skinned baby were switched at birth by a slave mother. Because the black baby grows up thinking he is white, he is highly racist toward his slaves. The white baby, who thinks he is a slave, grows up with no guidance and makes a living stealing, drinking, and doing other immoral things. During a murder trial, the town lawyer Puddn’head Wilson, who is seen as a peculiar fellow by the townsfolk, is able to expose the boys’ true identities. “Puddn’head Wilson” is a story carried by themes of racism, Southern customs, and questions of identity. On the surface it is a witty and satirical tale but as one digs deeper a biting social commentary of racial inequality can be found. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper.

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: Digireads.com Publishing
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1420956434
• ISBN 13: 9781420956436
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 110