"Mark Twain's autobiography is a classic of American letters, to be ranked with the autobiographies of Benjamin Franklin and Henry Adams.... It has the marks of greatness in it--style, scope, imagination, laughter, tragedy."--From the Introduction by Charles Neider

Mark Twain was a figure larger than fife: massive in talent, eruptive in temperament, unpredictable in his actions. He crafted stories of heroism, adventure, tragedy, and comedy that reflected the changing America of the time, and he tells his own story--which includes sixteen pages of photos--with the same flair he brought to...

Washington Irving's Life of George Washington (published in five volumes in 1856-59) was the product of his last years and remains his most personal work. Christened with the name of the great general, Irving was blessed by Washington while still a boy of seven, and later came to know many of the prominent figures of the Revolution. In these pages he describes them using firsthand source material and observation. The result is a book which is fascinating not only for its subject (the American Revolution), but also for how it reveals in illuminating detail the personality and humanity...

This is the first and most complete collection of all 136 humorous sketches and tales that Samuel Clemens (1835-1910), a.k.a. Mark Twain, started writing as a young reporter for various newspapers and magazines and later saw fit to issue in book form. Many pieces appeared in rare, first printings, only to be dropped in subsequent editions; for this reason, readers will encounter a number of yarns and tall tales unavailable elsewhere, even in the collected works. More unvarnished than his short stories or novels, and more willing to indulge in fun for its own sake, these sketches comprise a...

Washington Irving (1783-1859) was the first American literary artist to earn his living solely through his writings and the first to enjoy international acclaim. In addition to his long public service as a diplomat, Irving was amazingly prolific: His collected works fill forty volumes that encompass essays, history, travel writings, and multi-volume biographies of Columbus and Washington. But it is Irving's mastery of suspense, characterization, tempo, and irony that transforms his fiction into virtuoso performances, earning him his reputation as the father of the American short story....

Scottish novelist, poet, and essayist Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) was a writer of power and originality, who penned such classics as Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and The Weir of Hermiston. The editor has collected in convenient form Stevenson's short fiction, including the complete New Arabian Nights and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, as well as ghost stories, medieval romances, farces, horror stories, and the South Sea Tales. This volume amply illustrates Stephenson's wide range and enduring appeal.

For deft plotting, riotous inventiveness, unforgettable characters, and language that brilliantly captures the lively rhythms of American speech, no American writer comes close to Mark Twain. This sparkling anthology covers the entire span of Twain's inimitable yarn-spinning, from his early broad comedy to the biting satire of his later years.
Every one of his sixty stories is here: ranging from the frontier humor of -The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, - to the bitter vision of humankind in -The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg, - to the delightful hilarity of -Is He Living or...

This unorthodox but delightful anthology of 42 essays focuses on the masters of world literature writers best known for novels, plays, and poems and how they put the essay to their personal use. Contributors include Auden, Balzac, Conrad, Dickens, Dostoevski, Eliot, Faulkner, Flaubert, Gide, Goethe, Hardy, Hawthorne, Heine, Hemingway, Kafka, Kipling, Lawrence, Melville, Pirandello, Poe, Proust, Sartre, Tolstoy, Twain, Whitman, Wilde, Woolf, and Yeats."

Writer and Antarctic explorer Neider tells of his third trip to the frozen continent, describing the international stations there and the goals they are working toward. Neider also tours the Antarctic landscape, observing the geography and wildlife and evoking it in detail. Devoting scrutiny to the international treaties that protect the continent politically and environmentally, Neider reveals how important those treaties are. Also included in this work are interviews with Antarctic pioneers Sir Charles Wright, Sir Vivian Fuchs, and Laurence Gould.

Forty-nine short stories, selected for their richness of detail, accurate depictions of human passion, and international scope, fill this collection. The authors include Americans such as Hemingway, Faulkner, Saul Bellow, and Flannery O'Connor, 19th and 20th century Western European giants such as Proust, Sartre, Flaubert, Kafka, Mann, Pirandello, Rilke, and Balzac, Russian icons Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Pushkin, Turgenev, and Chekhov, and Asian writers Rabindranath Tagore and Lu Hsun. While many of the names are recognizable (though some, such as Bunin, Lagerlof, Nexo, and Svevo rank among the...

Mark Twain's hilarity and irreverence shine through in this impeccably chosen collection.