No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger (Mark Twain Library)

Twain, Mark,Gibson, William M.,Watson, Richard A.,Fischer, Victor

ISBN 10: 0520242068 / ISBN 13: 9780520242067

Published by University of California Press, 2004

About this Item

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger (Mark Twain Library)
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication Date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0520242068
• ISBN 13: 9780520242067
• Binding: paperback
• Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

Mark Twain's fantastical last novel took him twelve years--and three long drafts—to complete. Based on boyhood memories of the Mississippi River Valley and of the print shops of Hannibal, the story is set in medieval Austria at the dawn of the printing craft. It is a psychic adventure, full of phantasmagoric effects, in which a penniless printer's apprentice—a youthful, mysterious stranger with the curious name 44—gradually reveals his otherworldly powers and the hidden possibilities of the mind. Ending on a startling note, this surprisingly existential novel reveals a darker side to the author's genius.

This long-overlooked work appears here as Mark Twain intended it and replaces the bogus 1916 edition published by Albert Bigelow Paine, which relied on the first, instead of the final, draft, deleted one-fourth of the words, added a character, and misrepresented the ending. In addition, for the first time in the Mark Twain Library edition, a glossary of printer's terms is featured along with expert notes and commentary.

Review

"Vastly entertaining . . . . A wild extravaganza." -- Edward Wagenknecht, The Chicago Tribune