A stranger who feels mistreated by a supposedly uncorruptible town concocts a vengeful scheme to test the honesty of its leading citizens. A bet is made concerning whether a man carrying no money other than a £1,000,000 bank-note could survive in London for thirty days. Mark Twain writes to the Queen of England that he is being overtaxed by one of her employees who has mistaken the author for a plant.

Presents a collection of short stories by Mark Twain along with background information, chronology of Twain's life and work, timeline of significant events, outline of themes and plots, explanatory notes, critical analysis, and discussion questions.

"A delightfully informed path through the complexities of composition, publishing history, and the textual discontinuities that characterize so many of Twain's stories."—Journal of American Studies

These sixty satirical, rollicking, uproarious tales by the greatest yarn-spinner in our literary history are as fresh and vivid as ever more than a century after their author’s death. Mark Twain’s famous novels Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn have long been hailed as major achievements, but the father of American literature also made his mark as a master of the humorous short story. All the tales he wrote over the course of his lengthy career are gathered here, including such immortal classics as “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg," “The Diary of Adam and Eve,” and “The $30,000 Bequest.” Twain’s inimitable wit, his nimble plotting, and his unerring insight into human nature are on full display in these wonderfully entertaining stories.

For nearly two decades before Mark Twain published his finest novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, he was refining his craft and winning tremendous popularity with his short stories and sketches. This richly entertaining and comprehensive collection presents sixty-five of the very best of Mark Twain’s short pieces, from the classic frontier sketch “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” to the richly imaginative fable “Extract from Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven.” Compiled by Pulitzer Prize–winning Twain scholar and biographer, Justin Kaplan, this collection represents some of Mark Twain’s wittiest and most insightful writing.