Pudd'nhead Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins: The Authorized Uniform Edition - Softcover

Twain, Mark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1592241557 ISBN 13: 9781592241552

Publisher: Wildside Press, 2021

Synopsis

Book by Twain, Mark, Clemens, Samuel

About this title

From the Back Cover:

The two narratives published together in The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson and the Comedy Those Extraordinary Twins are overflowing with spectacular events. Twain shows us conjoined twins, babies exchanged in the cradle, acts of cross-dressing and racial masquerade, duels, a lynching, and a murder mystery. Pudd’head Wilson tells the story of babies, one of mixed race and the other white, exchanged in their cradles, while Those Extraordinary Twins is a farcical tale of conjoined twins. Although the stories were long viewed as flawed narratives, their very incongruities offer a fascinating portrait of key issues―race, disability, and immigration―facing the United States in the final decades of the nineteenth century.

Hsuan Hsu’s introduction traces the history of literary critics’ response to these works, from the confusion of Twain’s contemporaries to the keen interest of current scholars. Extensive historical appendices provide contemporary materials on race discourse, legal contexts, and the composition and initial reception of the texts.

About the Author:

Hsuan L. Hsu is Professor of English at the University of California, Davis. He is the editor of the Broadview Edition of Sui Sin Far/Edith Maud Eaton’s Mrs. Spring Fragrance (2011) and the author of Sitting in Darkness: Mark Twain's Asia and Comparative Racialization (NYU, 2015).

About this edition

• Publisher: Wildside Press
• Publication date: 2021
• ISBN 10: 1592241557
• ISBN 13: 9781592241552
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 306