In a single, eye-opening volume, Mark Twain, Updated Edition presents complex critical analyses of this author’s work. Born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, Twain, a novelist, humorist, journalist, and orator, is renowned for his wit, wisdom, and keen social commentary. He is not only one of the most quoted and widely read American authors, but his life and work continue to generate biographical and critical interest today. Bringing together a selection of the best criticism available, Harold Bloom breaks down the intricacies of Twain’s work and analyzes the ideas presented in clear, accessible language.
This volume is designed to present biographical, critical, and bibliographical information on Mark Twain’s best-known or most important short stories. Following Harold Bloom’s editor’s note and introduction is a detailed biography of Mark Twain, discussing major life events and important literary accomplishments. A plot summary of each short story follows, tracing significant themes, patterns, and motifs in the work, and an annotated list of characters supplies brief information on the main characters in each story.
Mark Twain and the Art of the Tall Tale is a study of a peculiar American comic strategy and its role in Mark Twain's fiction. Focusing on the writer's experiments with narrative structure, Wonham describes how Twain manipulated conventional approaches to reading and writing by engaging his audience in a series of rhetorical games--the rules of which he adapted from the conventions of tall tale in American oral and written traditions.
Mark Twain was known as a great American short story writer as well as novelist and humorist. This collection of eighteen of Mark Twain's best short stories, including both the well known and the lesser known, displays his mastery of Western humor and frontier realism, the qualities for which he is best known. The stories also show how Twain earned his place in American letters as a master writer in the authentic native idiom. He was exuberant and irreverent, but underlying the humor was a vigorous desire for social justice and equality.
Peter Messent gives accessible but penetrating readings of the best-known writings including Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. He pays particular attention to the way Twain's humour works and how it underpins his prose style. This book will be of outstanding value to anyone coming to Twain for the first time.
![The Best Short Stories of Mark Twain [Audiobook, Unabridged]](http://englishtips.org/uploads/posts/2010-07/2010073119520929050.jpg "The Best Short Stories of Mark Twain [Audiobook, Unabridged]")
