Pudd'nhead Wilson: Literary Touchstone

This Prestwick House Literary Touchstone Classic includes a glossary and reader's notes to help the modern reader appreciate Twain's perspective on the human race. UNLEASHING THE ACERBIC WIT for which he was already famous, Mark Twain released Pudd'nhead Wilson in 1894 to a public not quite prepared for the American satirist's dark attack on lingering racism following the Civil War and the failure of Reconstruction. The stories of twin Italian circus performers, a beautiful slave, and a lawyer whose wry observations earn him the reputation of the village idiot converge in the fictional town of Dawson's Landing, Missouri, where the newly discovered use of fingerprints helps to expose the hypocrisy of late-Victorian morality and solve a murder. Each chapter begins with a quotation from Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar, and these Franklin-like aphorisms propel the story forward. As Twain himself said, "There ain't any weather in it, and there ain't any scenery-the story is stripped for flight!" And, once it takes off, there's no pausing until the last ironic twist is revealed. If you're already a fan of Mark Twain, you'll love Pudd'nhead Wilson. If you're not a fan, this book will make you one.