At the beginning of Pudd'nhead Wilson a young slave woman, fearing for her infant 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.

MARK TWAIN"s ironic little novel, Pudd"nhead Wilson, is laid on the banks of the Mississippi in the first half of the 1800s. It concerns itself with, among other things the use of fiugexprinting to solve the mystery of a murder. But Pudd"nhead Wilsion is not a mystery novel. The reader knows from the beginning who committed the murder and has mote than an inkling of how it will be solved. The circumstances of the denouement, however, possessed in its time great novelty, for fingerprinting had not then come into official use in crime detection in the United States.Even a man who.fooled around with it as a hobby was thought to be a simpleton, a puddenhead. Such was the reputation acquired by Wilson, the young ,would-be lawyer in the Missoun frontier town of Dawson"s Landing. But Wilson eventually made his detractors appear as puddenheads themselves.

INTRODUCTION,BY LANGSTON HUGHES

A WHISPER TO THE READER

PUDD"NHEAD WINS HIS NAME

DRISCOLL SPARES HIS SLAVES

ROXY PLAYS A SHREWD TRICK

THE WAYS OF THE CHANGELINGS

THE TWINS THRILL DAWSON"S LANDING

SWIMMING IN GLORY

THE UNKNOWN NYMPH

MARSE TOM TRAMPLES HIA CHANCE

TOM PRACTISES SYCOPHANCY

THE NYMPH REVEALED

THE NYMPH REVEALED

PUDD"NHEAD"S STARTLING DISCOVERY

THE SHAME OF JUDGE DRISCOLL

TOM STARES AT RUIN

ROXANA INSISTS UPON REFORM

THE ROBBER ROBBED

SOLD DOWN THE RIVER

"THE JUDGE UTTERS DIRE PROPHECY

TOXANA COMMANDS

THE PROPHECY REALIZED

THE MURDERER CHUCKLES

DOOM