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  • Tags: twain-sketches

This working draft of Twain’s irreverent biblical satire shows that the author may have briefly considered writing a story not about Adam, but Cain (to whom he had intended to dedicate Roughing It prior to his editors’ objections). In later years…

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Twain was playful about authorship. These two novellas purport to be his “translations” of the biblical story of Adam and Eve, told from their own perspectives. Twain’s retelling is a humorous take on gender politics. He revised Adam’s Diary several…

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The American Publishing Co. issued 1,369 copies of the salesman’s sample for Twain’s second authorized collection of short fiction; this copy was used by a salesman in Brooklyn and Manhattan. 

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Twain’s second authorized collection of short fiction reproduces fifty-six old magazine and newspaper pieces alongside seven new humorous works. The texts tackle a range of social topics from politics to child rearing, demonstrating the ethical…

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This collection of sketches opens with the eponymous tale, apparently cut out from the original draft of A Tramp Abroad, concerning a pachyderm intended as a gift to the Queen of England who was allegedly purloined during a stopover in Jersey City…

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First published in 1880 in an anonymous edition of as few of four copies, 1601 is a ribald story in which William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and other Elizabethan luminaries discuss flatulence, sex, and other taboo topics. Twain acknowledged his…

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Twain’s semi-autobiographical reflection on Shakespeare, with an autograph note by Twain pasted inside the front cover: “Shakespeare gets a lot of applause for Hamlet, but if you had written it you couldn’t have got it accepted.” This is the first of…

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The eponymous sketch of this collection also appeared under the title “A Literary Nightmare,” and concerns Twain’s encounter with what would be called in our day an “earworm”—specifically, a catchy jingle about streetcar conductors written by Isaac…
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