Mark Twain's Library of Humor

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910), better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist, best known for The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, often called the Great American Novel. Mark Twain's Library of Humor is an 1888 anthology of short humorous works compiled by Mark Twain, William Dean Howells (1837-1920, editor of the Atlantic Monthly), and Charles Hopkins Clark (1848-1926, journalist for the Hartford Courant). American Illustrator Edward W. Kemble (1861-1933) is best known for illustrating Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

"Old pieces of humor are like antique toys: Some of them still work and some don't, but they all have a certain fascination. Especially if we know that they worked for Mark Twain. And when you find one that does still work after, say, a century and a half, if you are like me you say things like 'Look at that workmanship' to cover your wonderment at sharing inner-child glee with someone who was in the grave when your grandmother was born. To my surprise, I feel that way about a good many pieces in this book."        --from the Introduction by Roy Blount, Jr.

"Mark Twain is the Lincoln of our literature."--William Dean Howells