How Nancy Jackson Married Kate Wilson and Other Tales of Rebellious Girls and Daring Young Women
This edition brings together for the first time Mark Twain’s stories that feature girls and independent, unmarried young women. Although Twain wrote adolescent female fiction principally between 1895 and 1905, his earliest piece of that genre was published...
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Until very recently Mark Twain’s portraits of female characters have been dismissed as stereotypical. Critics have generally faulted him for neglecting to create authentic portraits of young women, and in their place presenting colorful portraits of widows...
Lucretia Smith’s Soldier
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Twain completed ‘‘Lucretia Smith’s Soldier’’ in 1864 and published it that year in the 3 December issue of the Californian, a San Francisco literary magazine edited by Bret Hart and Charles Henry Webb. Like ‘‘Aurelia’s Unfortunate Young Man,’’ this...
Aurelia’s Unfortunate Young Man
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‘‘Aurelia’s Unfortunate Young Man’’ was first published under the title ‘‘Whereas’’ in the San Francisco Californian on 22 October 1864. Twain later shortened this initial newspaper version and included it in the British edition of...
A Mediæval Romance
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Charles L. Crowe considers ‘‘A Mediæval Romance’’ a burlesque that indulges the Victorian attraction to manipulative plots and historical romances in the tradition of Sir Walter Scott (LeMaster and Wilson, 505). To these popular conventions, Twain...
The Esquimau Maiden’s Romance
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Twain and his family were living near Florence, Italy, and elsewhere in Europe in 1893, and his writing during this period was driven by the need to maximize his income and avoid financial ruin as, one after another, his business investments turned unprofitable...
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Twain wrote the opening three chapters of this unfinished manuscript circa 1897. It remained unpublished until 1967 when it appeared in Mark Twain’s Satires and Burlesques. For his setting Twain returns to the familiar Mississippi River village of Dawson’s...
A Story without an End
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Sometimes referred to as ‘‘John Brown and Mary Taylor,’’ this ‘‘storiette’’ was probably written in 1896 and was published without title in Following the Equator (1897). In the opening paragraphs Twain challenges his readers to participate in a contest, the goal...
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This unconventional ‘‘girl’’ story began in 1877 with a malfunctioning burglar alarm. When the Clemenses built their lavish Victorian residence in Hartford, Connecticut, three years earlier, they had a burglar alarm installed that connected all the windows...
How Nancy Jackson Married Kate Wilson
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Almost nothing is known about the composition of this story. Twain probably worked on ‘‘Nancy Jackson’’ circa 1902, but never attempted to publish the controversial tale (which is also known as ‘‘Feud Story and the Girl Who Was Ostensibly a Man’’). It was...
A Horse’s Tale
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In September 1905 Twain decided, after repeated requests by the actress and animal rights activist Minnie Maddern Fiske, to write a story exposing the cruelty and violence of bullfighting. He became emotionally caught up in writing the tale, though it took...
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Eve’s Diary (1906) is just one of a number of works in which Twain explores dimensions of Eve’s character, her relation to God and Adam, her life in the Garden before the Fall, and her life afterward. Twain’s other principal Eve texts are Eve Speaks (1923) and...
Saint Joan of Arc
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Although it is difficult to separate myth from historical accounts, it is generally accepted that Joan of Arc, an illiterate peasant girl from Domrémy, France, commanded the French armies and, with great courage and tactical skill, forced the defeat and...
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Twain began work on ‘‘Little Bessie’’ in February 1908 during a yachting trip off the Bermuda coast with his good friend and financial advisor, H. H. Rogers. The cover sheet of the typescript contains the following note, written in Twain’s hand: ‘‘It is dull, & I need...
Fondly recalling his daughters’ teenage years, Samuel Clemens between 1895 and 1910 made friendships with adolescent girls, his ‘‘Angel-Fish,’’ and created a host of young female protagonists in his fiction. Some connections between the Angel-Fish, Twain’s...