Ease Reading-Find Your Next Favorite Book

Hot Search

The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson and the Comedy Those Extraordinary Twins

mark twain shelley fisher fishkin david lionel smith sherley anne williams

... Show More
Widely acknowledged as the greatest of his later works, this story of switched babies and slavery is Twain's darkest vision of race in America. It began life as a slapstick comedy about Siamese twins, but as he wrote, something deepened. "The tale kept spreading along, and spreading along, and other people got to intruding themselves and taking up more and more time with their talk and their affairs. It changed from a farce to a tragedy while I was going along with it," Twain wrote in his frank afternote to the novel. In the end, the voice that comes to dominate the tale is Roxana's, a light-skinned slave who switches her infant son with her master's son to keep him from being sold down the river. Roxana, Twain's most complex and fully-realized adult female character, is a compelling and memorable tragic heroine, trapped with her son by the brutal system of slavery and by their own inescapable racial identities. At his best, Twain is the most uniquely American of writers, and it is inevitable that his best work revolves around the issues of race and of slavery embedded in the American psyche. The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson is a dark and powerful novel of race in America, written by the American master.

512 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1,1894

This edition

Format
512 pages, Hardcover
Published
March 6, 1997 by Oxford University Press
ISBN
9780195114157
ASIN
0195114159
Language
English

More editions

About the author

Profile Image for mark twain

mark twain

... Show More
Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist and essayist. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced," with William Faulkner calling him "the father of American literature." His novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), with the latter often called the "Great American Novel." Twain also wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) and Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894), and co-wrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) with Charles Dudley Warner.

Readers also enjoyed

Community Reviews

Rating(3.9 / 5.0, 100 votes)
5 stars
27(27%)
4 stars
31(31%)
3 stars
42(42%)
2 stars
0(0%)
1 stars
0(0%)
100 reviews All reviews
Profile Image for Kimberly .
Skittyl
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
... Show More
Some really fine parts,,some real insight and acerbic humor.
The whole is not equal to the parts. Nevertheless worth reading
or rereading-it's quite short.
0 0 Reply
Profile Image for Kimberly .
CrystalAnimeTear
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
... Show More
If I ever become half as good at the use of irony in literature as Mark Twain was, I could die happy. I was kind of ashamed of myself for having done a report on Mark Twain back in like 5th grade and now finding out about a book he wrote that I'd never even heard of. Twain really throws a wrench into society's views of the differences between black people and white people by essentially pointing out that there is no difference. The only reason society sees these differences is because they depend on them to keep life going along as they know it. While Puddn'head Wilson was originally published separate from Those Extraordinary Twins (actually it was only pretty recently that they started being published together) the two stories really can't be told one without the other (in my opinion).
0 0 Reply
Profile Image for Kimberly .
xdaux
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
... Show More
I read this book for a class at Rutgers and it changed my mind about Mark Twain. I was not a fan of his until I read this book. His characters came to life and made me want to read more. It had a plot and characters that I wanted to get to get to know and learn more about. It was the witty Twain that I have been hearing about but never really saw in Tom or Huck. It is an easy read with a lot of substance. Pick it up and walk in to the world of Twain.
0 0 Reply
Profile Image for Kimberly .
Pan_Panda
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
... Show More
this was much more interesting than i was anticipating! twain has such an interesting way of exploring human nature
0 0 Reply
Profile Image for Kimberly .
KingsGambit
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
... Show More
Cantankerous and bitter Twain may be my very favorite of all. Though no one would call this his greatest work, it ranks amongst his most scathing. His sights were set on the immorality of slavery and the false promise of religion. The best barbs, against man or God, are reserved for chapter headings doubling as entries for the would-be calendar of Pudd’nhead Wilson, the man whose first words to his new neighbors in a tiny hamlet of a town are (paraphrasing), “[Regarding a loudly barking dog] I wish I owned half of that dog. [Townie: ‘Why?’] So I could kill my half.”
0 0 Reply
Profile Image for Kimberly .
kizumi91
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
... Show More
Links below go to my reviews of the stories, but first I must address this particular version in the Barnes and Noble classics series. The following is addressed to whoever wrote the blurb on the back of the book, and whoever authorized it being placed there. It might be Darryl Pinckney who did the introduction and notes (which are good notes). Then again, it might not. It could be some admin at B&N who threw it on there; I don't know. But whoever it is, are you paying attention? Oh, you're not even here? Well, that's fine. Just to make myself feel better, I'll say what I have to say anyway, which is this:

n  FUCK YOU!n

I've learned the hard way not to read any introductions not penned by the author before reading the story because they always, always, always contain spoilers, so I skipped the introduction. I've learned the hard way to tread trepidatiously into end notes because one will occasionally drop a spoiler (Goddam B&N version of Ivanhoe), so I peeked at those and lucked out this time. But the paragraph synopsis on the back of this book, the thing one looks at when trying to decide whether or not to even read the book, not only reveals a major plot point which occurs a mere 25 pages before the end and would be a surprise if it weren't dropped here, but it also tells us how the matter turns out at the end! In short, if you want to watch the story unfold, there's no point in reading the book at all because the whole fucking thing has been spoiled! This is beyond the pale, and if I were rating this version of the book alone, the only reason it would be one star would be because I can't assign negative stars. Who does that? S'matter wit you?! Dickhead!

Be that as it may, my star rating for this volume reflects my thoughts on Twain's content and disregards the abominable conduct of whoever put this together.

...stupid-ass, story-spoilin' bitches...

Pudd'nhead Wilson: ★★★★✰
Those Extraordinary Twins: ★★★★✰
0 0 Reply
Profile Image for Kimberly .
bobdagreat
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
... Show More
Like a low tech version of Face-Off, Twain writes a switched in the crib tale ala the Prince and the Pauper. I’d heard that this was one of Jean Michel Basquiat’s favorite books - which added some flavor to my reading. Satire of the provincial mindset, of class, race and perception- less of a journey than Huck- Twain here has arrived and uses his wit to unravel the hypocrisies of small town life on the Mississippi under slavery. Considering this was published during reconstruction, Twain’s focus on Tom is the core of the book, an indictment of the slave owning class- an x-ray of all the humanity drained from a body. How little feeling Tom has for his fellow people, how deeply broken. While the underlying conceit allows Twain enough room to pass his indictment and cover for the deeper digs of his satire I did wonder why he left out Chambers once the characters reach adulthood. The little we get of Chambers near the end gives some clues but his omission from the main action seems purposeful- maybe to sustain the spirals of Tom’s fall.
0 0 Reply
Leave a Review
You must be logged in to rate and post a review. Register an account to get started.