The Mysterious Stranger and Other Sto..., Mark Twain
The Mysterious Stranger and Other Sto..., Mark Twain
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The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories, with eBook

Author: Mark Twain

Narrator: Jonathan Kent

Unabridged: 7 hr 5 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 02/16/2009

Categories: Fiction, Classic

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included


Synopsis

The Mysterious Stranger, Mark Twain's fantastical last novelette, 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 tale reveals a darker side to the author's genius.

The Mysterious Stranger is a rarity in the work of Twain—a story in which the author turns his sardonic, free-wheeling wit to the problem of Eternal Evil in a distant time and place. In the other stories presented here, Twain debunks his Gilded Age; he ransacks the backyards of daily life and fable to find his notorious, sometimes preposterous metaphors. He is as apt to deal with the great minds of the law hunting a wayward elephant as with a man who has a bank note no one can cash.

In addition to The Mysterious Stranger, this volume includes the stories "The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg," "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," "The Story of the Bad Little Boy," "The Diary of Adam and Eve," "Edward Mills and George Benton," "The Joke That Made Ed's Fortune," and "A Fable."

About Mark Twain

Mark Twain is the pseudonym of American writer and humorist Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910), whose best work is characterized by broad, often irreverent humor or biting social satire. Twain's writing is also known for realism of place and language, memorable characters, and hatred of hypocrisy and oppression.

Born in Florida, Missouri, Clemens moved with his family to Hannibal, Missouri, a port on the Mississippi River, when he was four years old. There he received a public school education. After the death of his father in 1847, Clemens was apprenticed to two Hannibal printers, and in 1851 he began setting type for and contributing sketches to his brother Orion's Hannibal Journal. Subsequently he worked as a printer in Keokuk, Iowa; New York City; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and other cities. Later, Clemens was a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River until the American Civil War brought an end to travel on the river. In 1862 he became a reporter on the Territorial Enterprise in Virginia City, Nevada, and in 1863 he began signing his articles with the pseudonym Mark Twain, a Mississippi River phrase meaning "two fathoms deep."

In 1867 Twain lectured in New York City, and in the same year he visited Europe and Palestine. He wrote of these travels in The Innocents Abroad, a book exaggerating those aspects of European culture that impress American tourists. Much of Twain's best work was written in the 1870s and 1880s, when he was living in Hartford, Connecticut, or during the summers at Quarry Farm, near Elmira, New York. Roughing It recounts his early adventures as a miner and journalist; The Adventures of Tom Sawyer celebrates boyhood in a town on the Mississippi River; A Tramp Abroad describes a walking trip through the Black Forest of Germany and the Swiss Alps; Life on the Mississippi combines an autobiographical account of his experiences as a river pilot with a visit to the Mississippi nearly two decades after he left it; and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court satirizes oppression in feudal England. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the sequel to Tom Sawyer, is considered Twain's masterpiece.

Twain's work during the 1890s and the 1900s is marked by growing pessimism and bitterness. Significant works of this period are Pudd'nhead Wilson, a novel set in the South before the Civil War that criticizes racism by focusing on mistaken racial identities, and Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, a sentimental biography.

In Twain's later years he wrote less, but he became a celebrity, frequently speaking out on public issues. He also came to be known for the white linen suit he always wore when making public appearances. Twain received an honorary doctorate from the University of Oxford in 1907. When he died he left an uncompleted autobiography, which was eventually edited by his secretary, Albert Bigelow Paine, and published in 1924.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jeffrey on January 26, 2016

I've always heard that Twain became increasingly bitter and misanthropic towards the end of his life, but I didn't understand how true that really was until I read The Mysterious Stranger. In this posthumously published novella, a sleepy Austrian village is visited by Satan, an angel who is the neph......more

Goodreads review by Steve on May 20, 2023

The title story is actually a novella, and it is accompanied by three slight bagatelles, with only the one about burglar alarms showing Twain’s propensity for laugh-out-loud humour. As the first work I’ve ever read by Mark Twain, ‘The Stranger’ literally floored me with the acerbic, vitriolic, dismis......more

Goodreads review by Kailey (Luminous Libro) on September 26, 2021

This collection of short stories and novellas has several imaginative and strange tales written in Mark Twain’s humorous style. I didn’t really enjoy these stories. Most of them don’t have a decent plot line. It’s all atmosphere and setting, with little substance. The characters aren’t that great. T......more

Goodreads review by blake on November 20, 2019

I'm not a big fan of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (though I plan to re-read them at some point) and when I read Mark Twain's critique of James Fenimore Cooper, I began to suspect—Hal Holbrook notwithstanding—that the beloved American author was kind of a doucheb......more

Goodreads review by Alli on January 12, 2009

Loved "The 1,000,000 Pound Note." Best story of the book. Didn't know Mark Twain could get so dark about religion as he gets with "The Mysterious Stranger," published after his death. I am sure that in its time it was offensive and likely passed off as rubbish. I think he's onto some stuff there. I me......more