Pudd'nhead Wilson

Zusatztext “He is a man of force...a blacksmith who stands at his anvil with the fire burning and strikes hard and hits the mark every time.”—Maxim Gorky Informationen zum Autor In his person and in his pursuits, Mark Twain (1835-1910) was a man of extraordinary contrasts. Although he left school at twelve, when his father died, he was eventually awarded honorary degrees from Yale University, the University of Missouri, and Oxford University. His career encompassed such varied occupations as printer, Mississippi riverboat pilot, journalist, travel writer, and publisher. He made fortunes from his writing, but toward the end of his life he had to resort to lecture tours to pay his debts. He was hot-tempered, profane, and sentimental—and also pessimistic, cynical, and tortured by self-doubt. His nostalgia for the past helped produce some of his best books. He lives in American letters as a great artist, the writer whom William Dean Howells called "the Lincoln of our literature." Louis Budd has written Mark Twain: Social Philosopher (1962) and Our Mark Twain: The Making of His Public Personality (1983). With Peter Messent, he edited A Companion to Mark Twain (2005). He was founding president of the Mark Twain Circle of America. Klappentext Mark Twain takes a hard look at the consequences of slavery in America in this classic satire. Set in a town on the Mississippi during the pre-Civil War era, Pudd'nhead Wilson tackles the seminal American issue of slavery in a tragicomedy of switched identities. What happens when a child born free and a child born a slave change places? The result is a biting social commentary with enduring relevance, and a good old-fashioned murder mystery. It also introduces one of Twain's favorite characters: Pudd'nhead Wilson, an intellectual with a penchant for amateur sleuthing. F.R. Leavis proclaimed this novel "the masterly work of a great writer." With an Introduction by Louis BuddCHAPTER I PUDD'NHEAD WINS HIS NAME Tell the truth or trump–but get the trick .–pudd'nhead wilson's calendar. THE SCENE of this chronicle is the town of Dawson's Landing, on the Missouri side of the Mississippi, half a day's journey, per steamboat, below St. Louis. In 1830 it was a snug little collection of modest one and two-story frame dwellings whose whitewashed exteriors were almost concealed from sight by climbing tangles of rose vines, honeysuckles, and morning-glories. Each of these pretty homes had a garden in front fenced with white palings, and opulently stocked with hollyhocks, marigolds, touch-me-nots, prince's-feathers, and other old-fashioned flowers; while on the window-sills of the houses stood wooden boxes containing moss-rose plants and terra-cotta pots in which grew a breed of geranium whose spread of intensely red blossoms accented the prevailing pink tint of the rose-clad house-front like an explosion of flame. When there was room on the ledge outside of the pots and boxes for a cat, the cat was there--in sunny weather--stretched at full length, asleep and blissful, with her furry belly to the sun and a paw curved over her nose. Then that house was complete, and its contentment and peace were made manifest to the world by this symbol, whose testimony is infallible. A home without a cat--and a well-fed, well-petted and properly revered cat--may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove title? All along the streets, on both sides, at the outer edge of the brick sidewalks, stood locust trees with trunks protected by wooden boxing, and these furnished shade for summer and a sweet fragrance in spring when the clusters of buds came forth. The main street, one block back from the river, and running parallel with it, was the sole business street. It was six blocks long, and in each block two or three brick stores three stories high towered above interjected bunches...

Dettagli sul prodotto

• Autori: Louis J. Budd, Mark Twain, Mark/ Budd Twain
• Editore: Signet USA
• Lingue: Inglese
• Formato: Tascabile
• Pubblicazione: 04.12.2007
• EAN: 9780451530745
• ISBN: 978-0-451-53074-5
• Pagine: 176
• Dimensioni: 108 mm x 174 mm x 12 mm
• Categoria: Narrativa > Romanzi