Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain (Bantam Classics)

I really enjoy complete collections of a single author. Reading the good and the less-good, I get a sense of the writer's mind, as well as his voice and style. Mark Twain is the clear-eyed, sad-eyed self-invented man who hates fraud with a passion and is determined not to be cheated or deluded. I know of no other writer in English, except Swift, with such a low opinion of his fellow creatures.

However, the father of every cynic is a disappointed innocent. Twain grew up in a stern Presbyterian house and imbibed especially the fire and brimstone and the sense of guilt and sin. He lost his faith at an early age, when his favorite brother, Henry, died in a steamboat explosion. Twain had encouraged Henry to work on the steamboats. He never became agnostic, however. For a long time, he was convinced of the malignity and moral inferiority of God. At the end, he seemed to embrace an Eastern philosophy -- all is painful illusion. We think of Twain as a comic writer, and he can be gut-achingly funny, but there's a pit of rage and despair in him as well.

The dark side asserted itself early, even in the comic masterpiece "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County." The entire tale is about a deceit, in this case, involving money. However, the equally early "Story of a Bad Little Boy" and "The Story of the Good Little Boy" hang on the deceit fostered by Sunday schools. Only in the world of children's moral literature are virtue rewarded and vice punished. What Twain was to call "the damned human race" fills his fiction as well as his histories. For villains so evil you want them squished like bugs you needn't go further than Twain's Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc -- villains all the slimier for being historic figures. But villains show up as dark when held up against a bright standard of innocence. So many of Twain's heroes are children and the naive. Many of them suffer. For Twain, this is humankind's central problem: why do we suffer and die? Nineteenth-Century Evangelical Christianity, with its emphasis on grace and salvation, pretty much ignores this problem, to Twain's disgust. This became more pronounced as he got older. "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg" indicts not only the "saints" of a sanctimonious town, but also the small, mean-spirited souls of the non-elect. "The $30,000 Bequest," a variation on Hadleyburg, shows how the hope of money ruined the lives of a happy couple. Even the righteous in heaven have their vanities, as we discover in "Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven."

As bleak as Twain's vision has been, it becomes living hell after the deaths of his wife and all but one of his daughters, including his beloved Susy. "The Diary of Adam and Eve," one of Twain's most lyrical works and one of his most gentle, contains the heartbreaking final line -- Eve's epitaph -- "Wheresoever she was, *there* was Eden" -- written after the death of Twain's adored wife, Olivia. On a less successful, but no less sincere a note, "A Horse's Tale," told from the point of view of Buffalo Bill's favorite horse, tells the sentimental story of a radiant little girl who dies. And Twain means every blush-making word of it. His grief is painful, and you cry out at the intensity of it. The Mysterious Stranger, his last major work, takes all that grief and goes, I think, slightly mad. There is little to do but wait for death and, not heaven, but oblivion.

The book is somewhat misnamed. A number of the stories come from collections like Life on the Mississippi, Innocents Abroad, and A Tramp Abroad. Furthermore, it's not complete. "1601," for example -- a gut-bustingly funny imagining of the glorious intellects of the Elizabethan Age discussing, essentially, who cut the cheese -- is missing. Indeed, I've seen only one edition of it in nearly sixty years. I wonder what's going on with the copyright.

Adam Gopnik provides a solid and entertaining intro to Twain's stories. He rightly warns you not to expect a masterpiece every time. I also like his point that Twain as a writer is mainly a voice, rather than a dramatist or a painter. The voice becomes the American voice of common sense, which is, after all, fairly uncommon. There's a handy Twain chronology against literary and political timelines, as well as a useful and attractive cloth bookmark sewn into the binding. I'll be rereading this book or dipping into it now and again.

Some have complained about the type size. Since I wear reading glasses anyway, I didn't have that problem.

Mark Twain was a pretty versatile author, writing everything from the story of Huck Finn to a time-traveling Arthurian satire.

And in addition to writing articles, novels and travelogues, he wrote a lot of short stories. Everyman's Library's "The Complete Short Stories" brings together all of Twain's short works, from the sublime to the sublimely ridiculous (there's a story called "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County"!).

The stories include stories of Jim Smiley and his trained frog, the Capitoline Venus, a missing elephant, the "orneriest-lookin'" cat Tom Quartz, the overwrought romance of Alonzo and Rosannah (via phone), a tragic Inuit maiden, a wild sketch about an odd couple on the Russian border, Captain Elias Stormfield's voyage through the startling expanses of heaven, and countless other tales. It also has some stuff that is not quite as easily classified as short stories, such as the demonic fable "The Mysterious Stranger," a scathing poke at organized religion.

"The Complete Short Stories" has a lot of different kinds of tales in it, from the tragic ("The Esquimau Maiden's Romance") to the hilarious ("The Belated Russian Passport"). But since Twain was a noted humorist, most of the stories have a wry, biting edge -- sometimes it's gentle, and sometimes it's pretty vicious.

Heck, even the romantic stories in it -- such as the tale of Alonzo and Rosannah -- have the vague feeling that you should be laughing at the overwrought emotions and reactions of the lovers.

And that edge permeates all the stories, however they are written. Some are conventional 19th-century prose, with splashes of color and clever wordplay. But he experiments with style at times -- sometimes he's being told a story by a fictional third person, sometimes the story is almost all dialogue, and so on.

Above all, Twain was a brilliant wordsmith, able to conjure up the mundane with as much color as the ethereal and exotic. His stories tend to be brief, but they pack a lot of punch -- even if they're barely more than sketches (like the membranous croup story), they have clever, colorful writing.

"The Complete Short Stories" (which isn't QUITE complete -- there are a few stories missing) is a good way of getting Mark Twain's short stories all in one. Vibrant, sharp and witty.

"Wherever these stories come from, and whatever surprising turns they take, you always hear Twain's voice as you read them, so that you are less conscious of the supervising artistry that it took to make them than of the individual presence that animates them," writes Adam Gopnik in the introduction to this short story collection. Indeed, although several of the works are reflections of sheer brilliance ("The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg," "Was It Heaven? Or Hell?"), it is Twain's ability to create a distinct and dynamic narrative voice that really carries his stories. Quite frankly, many of his stories are flat sketches, well told.

Even one of Twain's most well-known and widely-read short stories, "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" succeeds not in its substance, but in the voice of its narrator. Even if one forgets the content of the tale, one never forgets the inimitable voice of Simon Wheeler, the old prospecter who tells the story.

Perhaps one of the most controversial pieces included in this collection is "The Mysterious Stranger," which was heavily and unsanctimoniously edited by Albert Bigelow Paine after Twain's death. There is no doubt that Paine took indefensible liberties with Twain's work, but there remains some question in my mind about whether Twain would have approved of the final result.

Although he may be most well-known for his novels, Mark Twain was above all a storyteller. His ability to create a distinct voice for his narrators gives life to even his shortest, most undeveloped works. There is not a story in this book I would not read again.

Adam Gopnik, New Yorker magazine staff writer, wrote beautiful introduction to this book. He wrote biographical backdrop of Mark Twain's life and how his working career and strong personal beliefs influenced this writer's stories. Book comes in hardcover and contains 60 stories. It is a complete collection of all of Twain's short stories. So many of them are good, it is difficult to pick the best one. I enjoyed the story about the temporary editor at the agricultural newspaper who knows nothing about agriculture. As beautiful as his agriculture stories are, they have nothing to do with the agriculture and the reality of it. For example, he writes about turnips and how dangerous is it to "injure" them. For that reason, he recommends, it is best "the boy shakes the tree"...

There is another powerful story about the captain who is putting on trial a man who shot and killed a black man. As the killer is sentenced to hang, the captain wonders if the killer should burn in a fire. Another compelling story is about a man who after being a drunkard turns his life around and becomes a cashier at the bank. One day, as the bank where he works is being robbed, he refuses to tell the robber safe combination. In the process, he gets killed and leaves behind a wife and a child. After the incident, significant sum of money is raised that ends up being used for building a new church - nothing goes for the widow and the son.

Stories are both satirical and entertaining. It is Mark Twain for the keeps in one's personal library.

Samuel Clemens AKA Mark Twain is one of the greatest authors in the English language, so anything that collects every short story he ever wrote in a wonderful hardcover collection like this not only deserves praise, but your hard earned money to boot. The cover for the collection is gorgeous and firm, able to withstand an attack from my rabbits (who looove to eat books!) and like the includede bookmark, is made of a high quality cloth. The dust jacket is a shot of Twain himself at an angle and the pages are of a quality you don't see too often with physical books these days. The materials used in this book are reflected in the price tag, but you're definitely getting your money's worth here. Besides a historical timeline and an introduction by Adan Gopnik from The New Yorker, you are getting approximately SIXTY short stories including favorites like "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," "A Ghost Story," "The Mysterious Stranger," and more. The book, at over seven hundred pages, will take you a while to get through, but every story in this collection is well worth devouring.

Though most famous for novels and non-fiction, Mark Twain is one of the all-time great short story writers. His shorts are indeed as essential as his other work. This magnificent collection is currently the most popular - not to mention the most comprehensive that can be easily found -, making it one of the few works that truly belongs on everyone's bookshelf.

It has sixty stories over nearly 700 pages, arranged chronologically and covering Twain's whole writing career. Included are some of the most famous and best short stories ever, such as "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," "The Stolen White Elephant," "Luck," "The One Million Pound Bank-Note," "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg," "A Dog's Tale," "Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven," and "The Mysterious Stranger." It also has some of my personal favorites like "A Double-Barreled Detective Story" and "Was It Heaven? Or Hell?" The quality and variety is simply astonishing; it is hard to believe a single person could produce such greatness, and to have it all in one book is simply incredible. One of the most fascinating things is to see how Twain's stories grew darker. Though often sharply satirical, early pieces are nearly all light-hearted and often comical - some of the more memorably pleasant light reading in existence. However, Twain became ever more embittered, and his stories - some of which he dared not have published while alive - clearly reflect this. Dark masterpieces like "Hadleyburg" and "The Mysterious" seethe with misanthropy and deep pessimism. The contrast is nothing less than stunning and sometimes makes transitions awkward, but the chronological approach is still the best way to appreciate the breadth of Twain's accomplishment. Some stories are less good, but there is more to make us laugh, cry, and think here than in most writers' whole careers; Twain is one of the few truly immortal artists, and this is an essential part of his legacy.

There is no arguing with what is here; editor Charles Neider even includes excellent works like "The Diary of Adam and Eve" that are not often given in such collections as well as thirteen selections culled from non-fiction books. However, the title is misleading, and hard-cores will notice many omissions. All significant works qualifying as short stories by the strictest definition are here, but Twain wrote many short pieces that straddled the border between fiction and various genres. This included numerous pieces before "The Notorious," universally considered his first real literary effort, but they are very minor and of interest only to true diehards and scholars. More significant, though, are multiple omissions of works - many from late in his career - that dramatized various sociopolitical, philosophical, and theological concerns in quasi-fictional form. These include some very substantial works such as "The Private History of a Campaign That Failed," "The War Prayer," "King Leopold's Soliloquy" and its associated Czar piece, and "1601," as well as some of my favorites like "The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut." Neider is upfront about not including anything but pure short stories, but some will disagree with his calls. Also questionable is his decision to include the first published version of "The Mysterious," which was not authorized by Twain or printed as he wished, though the text's history is admittedly very complicated and this is the best version for most. True fans will want to seek out these and other pieces, as hopefully will anyone who likes this book, but these complaints are essentially nitpicking, because what is here is truly great and will be more than enough for general readers.

All told, this should be among the first handful of Twain books anyone buys, which is all that need be said.

Imagine a book that begins with the gentle humor and love of human eccentricity to be found in "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", and ends with the closing words of "The Mysterious Stranger, including this passage:
"It is true, that which I have revealed to you: there is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream -- a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought -- a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!"

One cannot help but be in awe of a mind that could encompass such a scope of feelings and thoughts, and express all within that range so beautifully.

In his introduction, Adam Gopnik says that while Twain's short stories "may, ironically, lack the concentration of his greatest books, they bring us closer to Twain's soul than perhaps any other of his writing..." I have to agree; in these stories we see the full and incredible range and complexity of Twain. We see the full scope of the man.

On occasion, this vast range comes through -- jarringly -- within a single story, as in "A Dog's Tale," which begins with the delightful sentence: "My father was a St. Bernard, my mother was a collie, but I am a Presbyterian." and ends with a scene of almost unbearable cruelty and sadness.

Adam Gopnik also says that this book is "Perhaps better dipped into regularly than read right through," and I agree again. But don't dip into it expecting one charming Jumping Frog after another. Rather, dip into it when you're feeling the need for a taste of humanity; its heights and depths, its lightness and its weight, its humor and its sorrow.

Physically, this volume is a handsome book, with a beautiful dust jacket, clothbound covers, and a ribbon bookmark attached to the binding.

This is NOT the complete set of his short stories! There is no jumping frog of Calaveras County, no man who corrupted Hadleyburg, and on and on. These are largely second-rate and forgettable works.
I am returning it.

This volume contains sixty short stories by Mark Twain, the man whom William Faulkner called "the first truly American writer, and all of us since are his heirs...I call him the father of American literature." H. L. Mencken wrote, "I believe that Mark Twain had a clearer vision of life, that he came nearer to its elementals and was less deceived by its false appearances, than any other American." Twain's stories are written with tongue in cheek, with tenderness, irony, and sarcasm, by a man who understood the follies of nineteenth century America and of humans everywhere and all times.

Adam Gopnik describes Twain's unique writing style in his eight page introduction. Twain's stories are talking tales told by a narrator as if he was speaking standing by a fireplace or sitting down at a table, face to face with a circle of friends. Gopnik tells how the short stories are often compassionate, but sometimes surrealistic. He reveals facts about Twain's life, how despite what seems evident in his tales, he didn't grow up in the pastoral setting he describes, but among the upper crust of a small town.

This book gives us the opportunity to read or reread Twain's first famous piece, the opening story in this collection, "The notorious Jumping Frog of Calveras County." Although written in 1865, it is still funny today. Most, but not all of the sixty tales are so successful. His "Diary of Adam and Eve" is certainly clever and definitely funny, but Gopnik calls "a good joke that goes on too long."

Yet, although readers may not be fond of every tale, they will certainly find many stories to enjoy; for they are sharp witted and fun to read.

"A Fable" is an example. It begins: "Once upon a time an artist who had painted a small and very beautiful picture placed it so that he could see it in the mirror. He said, `This doubles the distance and softens it, and it is twice as lovely as it was before.' The animals out in the woods heard of this through the housecat, who was greatly admired by them because he was so learned, and so refined and civilized, and so polite and high bred, and could tell them so much which they didn't know before, and were not certain about afterward." The story continues to tell with cunning humor how the cat tries to explain to them what a mirror is and how they cannot grasp what he was saying.

The people best advised to buy this volume of Mark Twain's short stories are: people who appreciate Twain, or who appreciate realism (since he was such a great example of 19th-century realism), or who appreciate American literature, or humor/satire, or simply the Everyman Library (since this is as handsome and sturdy as their other volumes and also complete with red ribbon bookmark). The people who might want a warning before purchasing this edition are serious fans of the contemporary short story (since Twain's short fiction is not as "written" or as worked out in the literary sense as the stories that appear in annuals like Best American Short Stories, 2011, etc.). These stories, as Adam Gopnik points out in an excellent and enjoyable Introduction, are in many ways oral performances. They mostly predate or are set apart from the short stories of Chekhov, who revolutionized the later development of the short story.

It may also be good to know that this volume is a reprinting of the 1957 collection prepared by Charles Neider for Doubleday, which means that the final story "The Mysterious Stranger" (pages 635-713) appears in the version patched together in 1916 by Albert Bieglow Paine and not the 1969 version done for the Univ. of California's Mark Twain library by modern editors. That newer version is still under copyright while the 1916 version is in the public domain. Twain wrote three versions of that short novel over his final years, all of them unpublished at his death in 1910. Paine conflated the versions while the version published in 1969 was Twain's third (titled "No. 44, the Mysterious Stranger").

These sixty satirical, rollicking, uproarious tales by the greatest yarn-spinner in our literary history are as fresh and vivid as ever more than a century after their author's death. Mark Twain's famous novels Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn have long been hailed as major achievements, but the father of American literature also made his mark as a master of the humorous short story. All the tales he wrote over the course of his lengthy career are gathered here, including such immortal classics as "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg," "The Diary of Adam and Eve," and "The $30,000 Bequest." Twain's inimitable wit, his nimble plotting, and his unerring insight into human nature are on full display in these wonderfully entertaining stories.
The complete short stories of Mark Twain was included in Harold Bloom's Western Canon. Thus, this is an essential reading in American and World Literature.
This volume is published by the Everyman's Library follows the same high standards of the collection, and it is strongly and very highly recommended. A perfect reading for the summer!

This is an important book in American literature. This collection truly shows off the massive range that Mark Twain had. From the author of books as divergant as Huck Finn and Joan of Arc, to the humorous travel writings and all the way past the bitter, hateful scribblings of his later life.
These are some of the highlights, as I see it:
"The Story of the Bad Little Boy", an early version of Twain's comprehenisive pessism and it proves that there is really no such thing. There's optimism and there's realism. "A Day at Niagra", an obvious parody of his own early newpaper feature writing. Perhaps it was an abandoned assignment on a trip to the falls and Twain had such a bad time he wrote this vicious, sarcastic piece. There are numerous other wonderful stories along the way, hilarious, mean-spirited, touching, beautiful, gently humorous and smile factoring. After the dreadful 1890s of Twain's life (lost a wife, a daughter, a fortune and another kid got sick), sometimes a few of the stories are near-misses. Still always amusing, but something is missing. Then, at recurring times over the last decade of his life, Mark Twain got angry. He popped the blister that became "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyberg", a brutal profile of mankind's inate greed and selfishness and how there will always be someone out there to laugh and enjoy your misery. "The $30,000 Bequest" is a heart-breaking tale about delusion and wasted lives, and how even the thought of money corrupts absolutely. "Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven" is a mercilessly blasphemous account of Heaven being no different, really, from the earth, the same classist behavior, the same tragic dreams of a better life never to be had. It shoots a hole the size of, well, Heaven in this shaky mythology.
Finally, we visit with "The Mysterious Stranger", a categorically violent attack on the idea of God. It demystifies so many absurdities organized religion tells you to take for granted, don't be surprised if you lose your faith after reading this short novel. It is one of the ultimate masterworks of satirical tragedy ever produced by a writer and is desperately in need of some ingenious filmmaker to produce an R-rated animated movie. Hell, anyone out there who may chance across this add, I'm willing to write the screenplay or assist in production in some way. I have some experience and can do this one TOP NOTCH.
Enough advertising--all in all, a beautiful, necessary book.

Mark Twain may be the greatest American author who ever lived. He has influenced every other great author who has followed him and his prose still impacts anyone who bothers to pick one of his works today. The quality of his short stories are just as good as anything else you have read of his, and often much funnier. His humor really comes through and is served well by the short story format.

It does feel weird to talk about his stories as part of the review, so I'll leave it at this - they are great and you should own them. My review is based on the Everyman edition, which is wonderfully done. The paper is high quality, the cover design is beautiful, and you won't find a book that is put together this well. The content is, or course, the highest quality - the book and the format do the short stories justice.

I enjoyed about half of the stories because of their humor and satire, particularly his earlier works. I didn't enjoy many of the later stories because they were cynical and had a pessimistic sense-of-life, the best example being The Mysterious Stranger. It's too bad Twain didn't have a rational philosophy available to him; he was clearly disgusted by the irrationality he saw around him and took it as a fact of life.

This is a wonderful collection of the short stories of Mark Twain with and introduction by Charles Neider. As far as I know, this is the first time all of these wonderful stories have been brought together in one book. This collection contains sixty (60) short stories. They are all pure Twain. Far be it from me to cast any stones at this particular author, one of my favorites, so I won't. Some of the stories are better than others and some will appeal to different readers in different ways. This is a great one to add to your library. Recommend it highly.

The funniest, sweetest, truest book ever written. "Political Economy" and "Science vs. Luck" are very short and howling funny. "The Diaries of Adam and Eve" will make you laugh and cry. "The Mysterious Stranger," "Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven," and "Was it Heaven, or Hell" are masterpieces of religion, ethics, and humor. "What Stumped the Bluejays" is a believable account of a sense of humor in birds.

This is a great collection of Twain's short story "song book". To agree with one review, the way in which it is published does make some of the stories in the middle of the book hard to read, and to disagree with another, this is a collection of sixty short stories so do not base you opinion of Twain's work on one cynical story with the simple message of "Life's not fair".

The collection really helps to give great insight on Twain's progression as a writer and thinker and is a great read for any person interested in American Fiction.

Not only does this book contain all of Mark Twain's short stories, but it also has a chronology at the start of the book that lists important dates related to Mark Twain, other literary events and general history. It really helps when reading the short stories to see what influences were at play during the time they were being written.

This Mark Twain collection contains well-known favorites like "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" as well as lesser known and very entertaining stories like one about a burglar alarm. The problem with this edition is that the print is small and hard to read. Nowadays, when you can access classics for free, (and can adjust the font size)if you are going to purchase a hardcover edition you want something beautiful and readable. Unfortunately, this edition isn't either.