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In 1590, in the Austrian village of Eseldorf, 'Donkeytown', three boys meet a charming, handsome young stranger who calls himself Satan, a nephew of the…
In 1590, in the Austrian village of Eseldorf, 'Donkeytown', three boys meet a charming, handsome young stranger who calls himself Satan, a nephew of the fallen angel, and who can perform marvellous tricks: he makes tiny people out of clay and then crushes them without a thought. Through his eyes the boys see human cruelty, superstition and the 'moral sense' that, he argues, makes people worse than animals, and he shows them the future of those they love. This volume adds other stories by Mark Twain.
Context and significance
Twain worked on the story in several versions in his last, bitter years, after the deaths of his wife and two of his daughters, and never finished it; it was published in 1916, six years after his death, in a version put together by his literary executor Albert Bigelow Paine and the editor Frederick Duneka. Read Pudd'nhead Wilson, and see his life.
About the author
Samuel Clemens (1835–1910) grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, on the banks of the Mississippi, and worked as a printer's apprentice, a steamboat pilot, a silver prospector in Nevada and a newspaper reporter before he became Mark Twain. A comic story about a jumping frog made his name in 1865, and his lectures and travel books made him the most famous American writer of his time.