America's post-Civil War years brought a renewed interest in the European scene. Journeys
known as Grand Tours led tourists to take ship to the Continent. They fanned out across the
landscape with the intent to "know Europe." Their return home resulted in a flurry of
published accounts. Twain satirizes both the tourists and their writings with delicious
wit. Ever a man to play with words, his "tramp" refers to both himself and the walking tour
of Europe he purports to have made. By the time you've reached the end of the account of the
"walking tour" incorporating trains, carriages and barges, you realize that the longest "walk"
Twain took occurred in dark hotel room while trying to find his bed. He claims to have
covered 47 miles wandering around the room.

Twain was interested in everything, probing into both well-known and obscure topics. His
judgments are vividly conveyed in this book, standing in marked contrast to his more
reserved approach in Innocents Abroad. A delightful overview of mid-19th Century Europe,
Tramp is also interlaced with entertaining asides. Twain was deeply interested in people, and
various "types" are drawn from his piercing gaze, rendered with acerbic wit. Some of these
are contemporary, while others are dredged from his memories of the California mines and
other journeys. He also relished Nature's marvels, recounting his observations. A favourite
essay is "What Stumped the Blue-jays." A nearly universal bird in North America, Twain's
description of the jay's curiosity and expressive ability stands unmatched. He observes such
humble creatures as ants, Alpine chamois, and the American tourist. Few escape his
perception or his scathing wit. This book remains valuable for its timeless rendering of
characters and the universality of its view. It can be read repeatedly for education or
entertainment.

All these volumes are self-recommending except, perhaps, to those poor, misguided people who continue to pigeon-hole one of the world's great writers. Yes, Twain was a humorist who virtually invented modern American English as a literary language. But the sheer range of his achievement is staggering. And the best way to experience it is altogether. And the best "altogether" is this magnificent 29 volume set from Oxford. Other people can speak with more authority about Twain the author. I want to speak a little about how delicious it is to encounter him in these books. They are reproductions of the original American editions and the facsimiles are beautifully rendered. But this isn't important in itself; we're not about to spend [...] for a little bit of nostalgia. Rather, just open any one of these 29 volumes and see what a difference its admittedly antique printing style makes. White spacing between the printed lines is generous to an unbelievable degree, as are the page margins. Your eyes don't tire. You can savour each page at whatever pace you want to set for yourself. Worlds open and invite. This is how people read books a hundred years ago. This is the way to read books!

I have not read Twain since High School twenty five plus years ago but a friend on a newspapers book forums got me to read him again and A Tramp Abroad is the first book I picked. For the current generation this book may drag but for those of us who grew up reading books instead of playing computer games this is Twain at his best. One has to actually read into his writing to appreciate a lot of the irony but when this book is really on like the mountain climbing near the Matterhorn ,Twain makes Seinfeld seem like he's talking about something. A brilliant travel essay and by the way the Penguin Classics edition of this book in paperback is 411 pages long, not 670 pages .

I found this book in a library and read it. I was surprised that Mark Twain wrote such a serious piece -- it did not contain his typical wit or sarcasm, but was a rather sentimental account of Joan of Arc. I wasn't sure when I started or finished it if it was actually a translation he made from a real account or if he had written it himself as a sort of historically based piece of fiction. I gather from what I have seen elsewhere that this is considered fiction -- a novel -- but he was painstaking in his attention to historical details and facts. It was a wonderful book, and I found it inspiring. He persuaded me to believe her story.

Albert Paine's biography, "The Adventures of Mark Twain" says: "It was just at this time [while Clemens was still in Hannibel working for his brother's paper] that an incident occurred which may be looked back upon now as a turning-point in Samuel Clemens's life. Coming home from the office one afternoon, he noticed a square of paper being swept along by the wind. He saw that it was printed . . . . He chased the flying scrap and overtook it. It was a leaf from some old history of Joan of Arc, and pictured the hard lot of the 'maid' in the tower of Rouen . . . . Sam had never heard of Joan before -- he knew nothing of history. He was no reader. . . . But now, as he read, there awoke in him a deep feeling of pity and indignation, and with it a longing to know more of the tragic story. It was an interest that would last his life through, and in the course of time find expression in one of the rarest books ever written. The first result was than Sam began to read. He hunted up everything he could find on the subject of Joan, and from that went into French history in general -- indeed, into history of every kind. Samuel Clemens had suddenly become a reader . . . ."

Mark Twain's best. I couldn't put it down. I was away for the weekend, found it on a book table in the lobby, and bought it for bedtime reading. The rest of the weekend was devoted to living Joan's story. A great weekend. An incredible book.

This book will make you feel like you walked with Joan, knew her, loved her - READ THIS BOOK. Truly one of the greatest reads of my life! A Book that really changed my perspective on a lot of things.

I was disappointed with this book. Shelley Fisher Fishkin seemed enter with a bias against Hannibal and everything traditional. After reading the book, I traveled to Hannibal and visited with people there about it. They were less than enthusiastic about it and one man claimed the bull whip incident was "completely made up". There are mistakes as well. Fishkin claims that Joe Douglass's name on his grave is misspelled. For example, she says that on his wife's gravestone the name is spelled differently. The stones are next to each other and they are spelled the same. If your goal is to blast small town America then this book is for you, but if you are looking for the whole story, read Twain's autobiography.

Shelley Fisher Fishkin clearly loves her work. She loves Mark Twain and she loves being able to write about him and teach about him. This book, written in an invitingly direct and personal style free of jargon, is best read as a voyage into the life and thought of a fine and creative scholar fully engaged with her chosen subject.

The book is arranged into three chapters. The first, "The Matter of Hannibal," ably juxtaposes Fishkin's experience of a visit to Hannibal, MO, and her reflections on that visit with her investigation of the role of Hannibal, MO, and Twain's youthful experiences on his classic novels THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER and THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN. The second, EXCAVATIONS, is a quasi-autobiographical account of her research and writing of her most famous book (WAS HUCK BLACK? MARK TWAIN AND AFRICAN-AMERICAN VOICES), blended with her reflections on the controversy surrounding HUCKLEBERRY FINN as an allegedly racist book. The last chapter, RIPPLES AND REVERBERATIONS, is a blend of historical literary criticism and meditations on the uses to which Americans and others have put Mark Twain the writer, "Mark Twain" the self-created character, and Mark Twain the human being.

LIGHTING OUT FOR THE TERRITORY is a lovely book; it's a dream to read, and it's thought-provoking in the best sense. It's a model of how literary critics should write both for one another and for a wider audience, and it's an eye-opening examination of one of the greatest writers this country -- or the human race -- ever produced.

-- R.B. Bernstein, Adjunct Professor of Law, New York Law School

Bear with me for a moment: Sometime around 7th grade, a teacher had my class keep scrapbooks with modern representations of Greek mythology. How quickly the books filled up with examples ranging from cartoons to place names, museum exhibits, sports writing and more! After cataloguing, we were asked, why do the myths live on? Lighting Out For the Territory reminds me of that exercise. It traces how America and Twain reached the point of the conception of Huckleberry Finn and asks how we have since lived with or, in some cases, without its lessons. What have we saved from Twain and his ideas, what have we lost of him and why? Was/is Twain and his work racist? Good questions, explored in the context of the scholar's personal adventures. Our author may not be able to do lunch in Hannibal, MO again soon, but she's welcome at my house any time.

This book, considered one of the classics of American Literature, tells the story of Thomas Sawyer, a mischievous boy who gets in many troubles and adventures together with his friends Huckleberry Finn, Joe Harper, and his beloved girlfriend from school, Becky Thatcher.

Tom lives with his aunt Polly, his sister Mary and his well-behaved younger brother Sid, who always sneaks on him. He is a very playful and imaginative kid, whose games of pirate and Indian sometimes go far beyond the limits of imagination and take a much more real stance.

Mark Twain explores Tom's mind as a child, exposing its dreams and weaknesses, taking the reader back to his childhood memories and making this book a must-read classic for all ages.

127 years after its initial publication, Mark Twain's The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer (1876) remains the definitive account of American boyhood. Bright, sassy, dauntless, charming, and shrewd, Tom embodies the archetype of every healthy, mischievous, and extroverted American boy.

The book's plot, probably better known to most readers today via cinematic versions of the story, is uncomplicated. Tom tricks and antagonizes his beloved, easily outraged Aunt Polly, develops a frustrating crush on young schoolmate Becky Thatcher, tricks his pals into doing his chores, reinvents himself as a pirate on the Mississippi, and, with Huckleberry Finn, runs afoul of Injun Joe when they unexpectedly witness a murder in a graveyard at midnight. Like every good story with a traditional structure, the narrative offers a series of contrasts, here between the comfortable, familiar, sunlit world of St. Petersburg and the events that occur when curious Tom strips back daylight's veil and peers into the community's secret life.

Interestingly, with The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer, the clever Twain was writing about present day (1880s) America, but simultaneously already portraying that era in nostalgic, sentimental terms. Thus, today's readers may find in a double nostalgia in the novel: the first, their own, focused on a longing for America's mythological "simpler times," and the second a reflection of the homey, intimate, bumpkin - , eccentric - , and "character" - ridden American small town that Twain provided for the readers of his own era. By writing so powerfully about boyhood, Twain offers readers of all eras yet another powerful provocation towards nostalgia: that for one's own lost childhood, youthful initiations, and passages from innocence into adulthood.

The novel contains seductive, lulling passages of great poetic beauty, such as the following: "He entered a dense wood, picked his pathless way to the centre of it, and sat down on a mossy spot under a spreading oak. There was not even a zephyr stirring; the dead noonday heat had even stilled the songs of the birds; nature lay in a trance that was broken by no sound but the occasional far - off hammering of a woodpecker, and this seemed to render the pervading silence and sense of loneliness the more profound. The boy's soul was steeped in melancholy; his feelings were in happy accord with his surroundings. He sat long with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands, meditating. It seemed to him that life was but a trouble at best, and he more than half envied Jimmy Hodges, so lately released. It must be peaceful, he thought, to lie and slumber and dream for ever and ever, with the wind whispering through the trees and caressing the grass and the flowers of the grave, and nothing to bother and grieve about, ever any more."

However, most of the book is written in a tone of buoyant theatrical artificiality: in episode after episode, Twain carefully sets his audience up for the punch lines to follow, and does so in a fashion that unabashedly reveals his own calculation as well as his intention that the reader be able to predict exactly what is to come. Even the narrative's tragedy - leaning moments are eventually punctured by corny, charming, tongue - in - cheek humor which seems to suggest that life, when well balanced, is primarily a pleasant affair of straw hats, freckled skin, rolled - up dungarees, molasses candy, indolent summer days, fishing tackle, white picket fences, and lovely chintz wallpaper.

A defining moment in American literature, the Adventures Of Tom Sawyer is an evocative, light, and fanciful book littered with shrewd social commentary and fragments of wisdom and insight composed by an American master at the height of his powers.

One of the Best Written books I've read. I can see how The Adventures of Tom Sawyer By Mark Twain is considered an American classic. Although not for adult readers I highly recomemd it to kids from 10 to 13 years old. Altogether this is a great book and if you havn't read it yet read it now.
The story of a rambunctous and mischievious young boy. It is interesting to read about Tom's many adventures with Injun Joe, the villian, Huck Finn, the son of the town drunkard, Becky Thatcher, Tom's grade school sweetheart, and Tom's best friend Joe Harper. These adventures include running away from home, getting lost in a cave, watching a man get stabbed to death and an innocent man get blamed for it. You can be a part of these adventures and many more if you choose to go on the journey throgh the book of Tom Sawyer.
You learn many things from this book. You learn a little about what life was like in the 1830's. Another mesage this book gives is that we should let kids be kids. These are just a few things you learn from the book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

"Come here, Huck," Aunt Polly called from the front porch where she was washing the clothes, " Don't you dare talk to that nigger again, you hear me, Huck, never!"
"Alright, I am coming I was just making a bargain," Huck yelled back as he slipped the money in his pocket.
My essay is on the book Huckleberry Finn. I read this book and loved it. I think this book shows a friendship between a black slave and a white boy during a time when that was considered an unusual thing.
This book takes place during a time when blacks were not treated equal. Blacks were thought of as property not as humans. An example of this takes place in the down town slave market.
" Cheap niggers, get your cheap niggers," a slave driver called out from on top of the stage. Families are being separated and children are crying while they are standing in shackles and cuffs. This is hatred.
In this book, there is a lot of action. Every time you turn the page somebody is getting into trouble. It even goes as far as to put on a play to rip people off.
" Come see the Play of Nonsense, the best in the world," the duke yelled to the listeners. The duke and so called king are going to put on a play. Their idea is to rip people off and run with their money. It is a smart idea but later on they pay for it. The next night the play starts. Hundreds of people walk in and hand their money to the duke. Right when the play starts, the duke comes out and announces that there have been some misunderstandings and rushes off with
the money he collected from the audience. This book's plot is awesome.
In this story the main characters are laid back and have a great sense of humor. An example this happens when Huck and Jim, a runaway slave, are rafting down the huge river. Jim is in great danger, but they always have time to play tricks on other people.
Also, there is a lot of dirty tricks and cheating. All four characters have a good sense of humor and a mind that is made to get into trouble. An example of this takes place when Huck fakes his own death and fools everybody while he lives on a raft for two years. He left his Aunt Polly behind to mourn about him and fooled everybody else. For a while he stayed on a little island but then decided to raft down a river. He made his own camps and caught his own food. All this to him was a fun vacation. He loved it!
In conclusion, this book is awesome! My four beliefs are: there is a hatred toward blacks in this story; the plot is filled with all kinds of action; the characters are happy, laid back, and have a great humor; and there is a lot of bad trick playing and a whole bunch of cheating in this story. I think Twain was trying to show us an ideal example of friendship.

When I read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain in high school, it was possibly the first book I enjoyed that was assigned by a teacher. Twain's imagery puts the reader right beside Huck while he escapes 'sivilization' and floats down the Mississippi river with his slave-gone-fugitive friend Jim. Huck's innocent outlook on the world is both humorous and adorable. Huck's respect for Jim is admirable. Even though Huck was brought up with Jim being a inferior slave, he still looks up to Jim. Also, I think that although Jim's dialect adds to the effectiveness of the book, it is very difficult to understand. I think Twain writes it a little too much how the dialect sounds. I would recommend this book to anyone. It offers plenty of excitement and surprises.

This is truly one of the great American novels, but not only is it popular with critics and academics, it is a great story for the everyday reader. I was originally assigned to read this book over the summer before eigth grade and thought it was a terrifically fun story about a young boy on an adventure down the Mississippi River, but now several years later I can still relate to it, but on a new level. This book contains fabulous social satire, excellent use of the vernacular, wonderful characters such as the Duke and Dauphin, and several lessons in morality presented by a savvy young boy who doess not realize how intelligent are his instincts. Mark Twain is a marvelous author, this being only one of his fine novels and short stories, and I envy his ability to get in touch with his childhood and create such a genuine and accurate character as Huck Finn. This is a terrific book, and I feel that anyone who has not had the privilege of reading it is missing out on something wonderful.

"Report from Paradise" is Mark Twain's last published book and it took him over forty years to finish it. It has also been reported that it was the only story Twain aka Samuel Clemens actually enjoyed writing.

Twain's description of the afterlife as seen through the eyes of a sailor is quite original and there are many interesting aspects to Twain's at times taunting writing, with clear implications to social criticism tetectable.

"Report from Paradise" is a short and light read, and despite it's many inconsistancies it manages to relay a fun quality to it with the expence of blindly followed religious beliefs and ways of thinking.

Tired of tedious, if earnest, pseudo-philosophizers who will give you all the secrets of universal happiness in ten minutes a day? Tired of smug pulpit-pounders who somehow, while still human, seem to "know" as much as any divinity you can think of? Then it's time to spend an hour with Mark Twain. Come on: you haven't given the old guy a minute since you had to read "Huckleberry Finn" in high school or college, and it's about time you did. Captain Stormfield's "Extract" is just the tonic your overburdened soul needs. Stormfield's heaven seems to let everybody in, and to do its best to fulfill every one of their dreams, until-- you guessed it--their expectations conflict. How can Moses, for example, be expected to greet every faithful Jew, Christian and Muslim, with hugs and kisses without 1] getting soaked with slobber, and 2] getting disgusted with his lack of free time? "[The patriarchs] are kind and gentle old Jews, but they ain't any fonder of kissing the emotional highlights of Brooklyn than you be." Enough said.

Mark Twain's 1,000,000 bank note is a charming story with a few suprises. Whe a man is shipwrecked his life takes a surprising turn. He finds himself accross the Atlantic Ocean without a cent to his name and with only what he is wearing. In England his missfortune interests two welthy men who decide to make a bet on him. He is given only a 1,000,000 pound bank note and a month on his own. Mark twain uses humor and irony wonderfully in this book. As in many of his books insights into human nature, especcially pride, are enlightening and logical. I would recomend this book to anyone who enjoys humorus short stories without too much slapstick.

I really didn't know what sort of theme this book would have. Turns out it was pretty much a diary of the "first married couple" It would be a good book for a first anniversary gift. It's not bad, definitely well written. It wouldn't be offensive to anyone who actually read it.

It's impressive how well Mark Twain describes difference between a man and woman. It's sometimes funny and often sentimental to love....

This abridged version has been a very good gift for newly married couples who would like something short and sentimental and a little thought-provoking to read while honeymooning. It provides the literary and emotional essentials of the longer edition. The editing, while at times abrupt, is smooth enough to make the story easy to follow.

This little book manages to evoke more passionate emotions, word for word, than anything else you'll find. You'll be confused, frustrated, awed, elated, broken, and hopeful as Adam and Eve (and Twain) pull you into their thoughts and interpretations of life. This is a great little valentine for your sweetheart or yourself, and has been appreciated by each of the several couples to whom I've given it, and treasured by some. One couple read it to one another as they drove across the country on their honeymoon. Another read it on a sunny tropical beach.

I recommend this version over the unabridged version for most gift recipients, as it's more likely to be read completely. ...And if you buy this wonderful book for wonderful friends, you don't want them to miss the end!

There are two unrelated pieces by Mark Twain in this volume, both of them fallen into (or perhaps, never rose from) obscurity, and deservedly so. "1601" is an lewd & raunchy imaginary conversation at the court of Elizabeth I. The narrator is disgusted by what he has heard -- the author partly shares the disgust and partly is fascinated with the fact that raunchy talk was not always taboo. This story has value as a look into Victorian sensibilities and into Twain's personality, but I did not enjoy reading it. I found it tedious, like Chaucer's Miller's Tale.

"Is Shakespeare Dead?" is a wonderful but misleading title. Actually this piece is about the old controversy of whether Shakespeare wrote the works attributed to him, with Twain jousting for the Baconian cause. He admits at the outset that he originally developed his Baconian prejudice merely for the sake of argument with an ardent Avonian. This work adds nothing useful to the Baconian position, and would be of interest only to the most ardent collectors of Twainiana.

1601 recounts a naughty fireside chat between Shakespeare and other noteworthy english figures. Twain writes the entire text in a basterdized version of middle english spelled phoneticly. It is quite funny but difficult to read and rather course. In the second half of the book Twain argues that Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare's plays. It is a prime example of Twain's wit and one long gentlemanly slight against Shakespeare.

Yes, this IS a fart joke. In fact, rumor has it that Twain's poker buddies were its first readers. The then Sec'y of the Army had West Point Press publish it.The transcendant skill and humor raises this to greatness, despite the subject. In fact, Twain probably took this as a huge challenge.Keep it from the youngest until they can appreciate it, but read it aloud alone together every Valentine's day.

Mark Twain's satiric fantasy "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" sets up the premise of a 19th Century American being transported (via the application of a crowbar to his skull) to the legendary Camelot, where he initially suffers culture shock in the extreme. The novel's immediately obvious flaw (and I assume Mark Twain was aware of it but simply ignored it) is the 19th Century hero's ability to communicate with Britons of the 6th Century. They, of course, would have been speaking an English similar to that in "Beowulf"; the book has them talking like characters in "Hamlet". The opening chapters are comic in mood, complete with limp jokes. (When one character introduces himself as a page, the Yankee replies: "Go 'long, you ain't more than a paragraph." Oh, Lord.) However, the story quickly becomes dark and then increasingly darker. The degraded condition of the masses (which the modern hero compares to 18th Century France) culminates in a tour (with King Arthur disguised as a peasant) of a oountryside corrupted by monarchy and the Church, both of which were loathed by Mark Twain. Feminists should be warned that the author's misogyny is given free rein here: all the ladies of the court are thoughtless twits, and Morgan Le Fay is a shrew who habitually and casually kills her servants. The heroine Alisande (who, of course, becomes Sandy) is a tiresome chatterbox, whom the hero abruptly marries as a sort of social condescension. But his attitude towards women is merely a part of his general misanthropy, leading him to write at one point: "Well, there are times when one would like to hang the whole human race and finish the farce." Once the protagonist has established himself as Arthur's right-hand man (he's called "The Boss"), he exercises his Yankee ingenuity to industrialize the realm. With the genius of Gutenberg, Morse and Bell at his disposal, he sets up a newspaper and introduces the telegraph and the telephone to the Middle Ages. (Just how he devises the technology to accomplish this is not made too clear.) At any rate, The Boss is considered a great wizard, and Merlin (or Brer Merlin, as the Yankee calls him) is treated like a fraudulent fool. Motivating all this is a somewhat smug sense of 19th Century superiority. Actually, the Yankee goes beyond his own century and into the 1900's. When Guenever's treason causes the civil war which divides Britain, The Boss drills a group of cadets (his West Pointers, he calls them) that he leads off to battle against the anti-Arthurian knighthood. The result is a blood bath presciently and repulsively similar to the trench warfare of 1914-1918. (The novel was published in 1889.) If this is meant to be an indication of future efficiency, it's an extremely pessimistic vision. But then, the whole story is Mark Twain's gloomy statement on Mankind's uneasy place in a dysfunctional world, be it the Dark Ages or the somber present.

When Hank Morgan, the head superintendent of the great arms factory, receives a smack on the head given by a friend nicknamed Hercules, he wakes up under an oak tree. A young man tells Morgan is he is in Camelot in the year 528. Not believing the boy, Morgan insists it is the year 1879 in Hartford, Connecticut. Morgan's adventures are written in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, by Mark Twain. Sir Kay throws Morgan in prison after he finds the Yankee and scares him up a tree. Sentenced to death the next day, Morgan performs a "miracle" before he is hung and King Arthur, believing him to be a wizard, set him free. Slowly, Morgan works his way up to "The Boss" of King Arthur's court and brings all of his 19th century knowledge to the people of Camelot, such as the telephone and electric lights.
Although I would recommend this book to advanced readers, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is over 400 pages and it was difficult for me to get into the story at first. Also, the language was hard to understand. For example, "Fair sir, will ye just?" and "Prithee do not let me." Despite the length and the language, I enjoyed the way Twain used characters and stories from the Arthur legends and formed them into the plot. The book made me think, what would the world be like if some one actually did go back in time?

'Connecticut Yankee' is an excellent political satire still relevant to today's world. Everyone's heard of it, and it's been spoofed many times in film. However, few people have read it and they're missing a treat. Mark Twain is one author whose works consistently remain applicable to modern society. 'Yankee' is funny, interesting and highly worth your time.