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Loading... A Murder, A Mystery, and a Marriage (edition 2001)by Mark Twain, Roy Blount Jr., Peter de Seve (Illustrator), Roy Blount, Jr. (Foreword)
Work InformationA Murder, a Mystery, and a Marriage by Mark Twain
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. A book that took 125 years to publish. How could I pass this up when I saw it on the shelves while browsing my library's selection of Mark Twain's novels? To be honest, I probably would have been just fine passing on it. It's a short story, a very short story; half the book is commentary by Ray Blount Jr. Me and short stories typically don't get along well, and that was the case with this one as well. There just wasn't enough substance for this readers taste. Despite that, the history of the novel is fascinating. In the midst of writing Huckleberry Finn, Twain was struck by an idea to come up with a skeleton plot and then have The Atlantic publish novelettes that he and other leading authors of the time, including Henry James, would write based upon said skeleton plot. He was obssessed with the idea and wrote numerous letters over the next couple decades to the publisher of The Atlantic, a close friend of his, to make it happen. Unfortunately for Twain, it never did. But now, over a century later, at least part of his dream has been made possible. It is a strange little story however, and really makes you wonder, just what did Twain have against Jules Verne. And why would Twain name a hated character after his best friend, whom was known to be the complete opposite in almost every way of his fictional counterpart? The story takes place in a fictional Missouri town in which a young man is discovered laying in the snow, with no obvious means of having arrived there. That is the mystery, and this mystery leads to both the murder and the marriage. no reviews | add a review
"Upon the border of a remote and out-of-the-way village in south-western Missouri lived an old farmer named John Gray. . . ."In 1876, the same year The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was published, Mark Twain wrote a story for The Atlantic Monthly. He meant it as a "blind novelette"a challenge to other writers to submit their own ending of the story in a national competition. Twain asked his editor at The Atlantic to request submissions from leading authors of the day, including Henry James.Perhaps because few writers could write as well as Twain, no one responded, and Twain's original complete manuscript languished in literary hibernation. It was rediscovered in 1995 and appear in The Atlantic Monthly in 2001, having come full circle.Set in the fictional town of Deer Lick, Missouri, A Murder, a Mystery, and a Marriage chronicles the fortunes of a farmer determined to have his daughter marry the son of a wealthy man. It's a charming story in the Twain tradition and a delightful addition to his legacy. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.4Literature English (North America) American fiction Later 19th Century 1861-1900LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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a fairly fun sketch of a hardscrabble family in a small town the husband-father of which had a wish for a rich son-in-law. Things go up and go down, a stranger "falls into" the story, there is lots of talk, all Hell breaks loose, and finally most things work out. ( )