All of these selections in this volume were comosed between 1896 and 1905. Mark Twain wrote them after the disasters of the early and middle nineties that had included the decline into bankruptcy of his publishing business, the failure of the typsetting machine in which he invested heavily, and the death of his daughter Susy. Their principal fable is that of a man who has been long favored by luck while pursuing a dream of success that has seemed about to turn into reality. Sudden reverses occur and he experiences a nightmarish time of failure. He clutches at what may be a saving thought: perhaps he is indeed living in a nightmare from which he will awaken to his former felicity. But there is also the possibility that what seems a dream of disaster may be the actuality of his life. The question is the one asked by the titles that he gave to two of his manuscripts: "Which Was the Dream?" and "Which Was It?" He posed a similar question in 1893: "I dreamed I was born, and grew up, and was a pilot on the Mississippi, and a miner and journalist...and had a wife and children...and this dream goes on and on and on, and sometimes seems so real that I almost believe it is real. I wonder if it is?" Behind this naïve query was his strong interest in conscious and unconscious levels of mental experience, which were then being explored by the new psychology.

For years, many of Twain’s philosophical, religious, and historical fantasies concerning the nature and condition of humanity remained unpublished. Thirty-six of these writings make their first appearance here.

The South was many things to Mark Twain: boyhood home, testing ground for manhood, and the principal source of creative inspiration. Although he left the South while a young man, seldom to return, it remained for him always a haunting presence, alternately loved and loathed. Mark Twain and the South was the first book on this major yet largely ignored aspect of the private life of Samuel Clemens and one of the major themes in his writing from 1863 until his death. Arthur G. Pettit clearly demonstrates that Mark Twain's feelings on race and region moved in an intelligible direction from the white Southern point of view he was exposed to in his youth to self-censorship, disillusionment, and, ultimately, a deeply pessimistic and sardonic outlook in which the dream of racial brotherhood was forever dead. Approaching his subject as a historian with a deep appreciation for literature, he bases his study on a wide variety of Mark Twain's published and unpublished works, including his notebooks, scrapbooks, and letters. An interesting feature of this illuminating work is an examination of Clemens's relations with the only two black men he knew well in his adult years.

The Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain The Mysterious Stranger is the final novel attempted by the American author Mark Twain. He worked on it periodically from 1897 through 1908. The body of work is a serious social commentary by Twain addressing his ideas of the Moral Sense and the "damned human race." Twain wrote multiple versions of the story; each is unfinished and involves the character of "Satan." "St. Petersburg Fragment" Twain wrote the "St. Petersburg Fragment" in September 1897. It was set in the fictional town of St. Petersburg, a name Twain often used for Hannibal, Missouri. The Chronicle of Young Satan The first substantial version is commonly referred to as The Chronicle of Young Satan and relates the adventures of Satan, the sinless nephew of the biblical Satan, in Eseldorf, an Austrian village in the Middle Ages (year 1702). The story ends abruptly in the middle of a scene involving Satan' entertaining a prince in India. Twain wrote this version between November 1897 and September 1900. "Eseldorf" is German for "assville" or "donkeytown." Schoolhouse Hill The second substantial version Twain attempted to write is known as Schoolhouse Hill. It is set in the US and involves the familiar characters Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer and their adventures with Satan, referred to in this version as "No. 44, New Series 864962." Schoolhouse Hill is the shortest of the three versions. Twain began writing it in November 1898 and, like the "St. Petersburg Fragment," set it in the fictional town of St. Petersburg.

My Platonic Sweetheart is a piece of short fiction by Mark Twain. Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 - April 21, 1910), better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. He wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), the latter often called "The Great American Novel." Twain grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, which provided the setting for Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. After an apprenticeship with a printer, he worked as a typesetter and contributed articles to the newspaper of his older brother, Orion Clemens. He later became a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River before heading west to join Orion in Nevada. He referred humorously to his singular lack of success at mining, turning to journalism for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise. In 1865, his humorous story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," was published, based on a story he heard at Angels Hotel in Angels Camp, California, where he had spent some time as a miner. The short story brought international attention, and was even translated into classic Greek. His wit and satire, in prose and in speech, earned praise from critics and peers, and he was a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists, and European royalty.

Originally published: Berkeley, Calif; London: University of California Press, 1969.