For deft plot, riotous inventiveness, unforgettablecharacters, and language that brilliantly captures the lively rhythms of American speech, no American writer comes close to Mark Twain. This sparkling anthology covers the entire span of Twain's inimitable yarn-spinning, from his early broad comedy to the biting satire of his later years.Every one of his sixty stories is here: ranging from the frontier humor of "THE NOTORIOUS JUMPING FROG OF CALAVERAS COUNTY" to the bitter vision of humankind in "THE MAN THAT CORRUPTED HADLEYBURG,"to the delightful hilarity of"lS HE LIVING OR IS HE DEAD?"Surging with Twain's ebullient wit and penetrating insight into the follies of human nature, this volume is a vibrant summation of the career of-in the words of H. L. Mencken-"the father of our national literature"

The present volume contains a total of Sixty stories, thirteen of them gathered from works of non-fiction They cover the entire span of Twain"s published works, from 1865 to 1916,six years after his death. The text is that of the Stormfield Edition of Twain"s Works, published in 1929 by Harper & Brothers in thirty-seven volumes. The stories are arranged chronologically according to the years of first publication, and alphabetically within a given year whenever more than one story was published in that year.  "A Cure for the Blues" is an example of a short piece which I did not include. It is a sort of burlesque book review, with none of the usual attributes of a story. "The Private History of a Campaign That Failed" is another example. It is a piece of reminiscence which comes close to being autobiography and again is clearly something other than a short story.

Introdution

The Notorious lumping Frog of Calaveras County

The Story of the Bad Little Boy

Cannibalism in the Cars

A Day at Niagara

Legend of the Capitoline Venus

Iournalism in Tennessee

A Curious Dream

The Facts in the Great Beef Contract

How I Edited an Agricultural Paper

A Medieval Romance

My Watch

Political Economy

Science vs. Luck

The Story of the Good Little Boy

Buck Fanshaw"s Funeral

The Story of the Old Ram

Tom Quartz   

ATrial

Toe Trials of Simon Erickson

A True Story

Experience of the McWilliamses with Membranous Croup

Some Learned Fables for Good Old Boys and Girls

The Canvasser"s Tale

The Loves of Alonzo FRz Clarence and Rosannah

Ethelton

Edward Mills and George Benton: A Tale

The Man Who Put Up at Gadsby"s

Mrs, McWilliams and the Lightning

What Stumped the Bluejays

A Curious Experience

The Invalid"s Story

The McWilliamses and the Burglar Alarm

The Stolen White Elephant

A Burning Brand

A Dying Man"s Confession

The Professor"s Yarn

A Ghost Story

Luck

Playing Courier

The Californian"s Tale

The Diary of Adam and Eve

The Esquimau Maiden"s Romance

Is He Living or Is He Dead?

The ￡1,000,000 Bank-Note

Cecil Rhodes and the Shark

The Joke That Made Ed"s Fortune

A Story Without an End

The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg

The Death Disk

Two Little Tales

The Belated Russian Passport

A Double-Barreled Detective Story

The Five Boons of Life

Was It Heaven? Or Hell?

A Dog's Tale

The $30,000 Bequest

A Horse's Tale

Hunting the Deceitful Turkey

Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven.

A Fable

The Mysterious Stranger