The Stolen White Elephant Annotated

You know in what reverence the royal white elephant of Siam is held by the people of that country. You know it is sacred to kings, only kings may possess it, and that it is, indeed, in a measure even superior to kings, since it receives not merely honor but worship. Very well; five years ago, when the troubles concerning the frontier line arose between Great Britain and Siam, it was presently manifest that Siam had been in the wrong.

(The Stolen White Elephant, by Mark Twain) Includes: Bio of Mark Twain, 100 Famous Mark Twain Quotes, Complete bibliography of Mark Twain, You know in what reverence the royal white elephant of Siam is held by the people of that country. You know it is sacred to kings, only kings may possess it, and that it is, indeed, in a measure even superior to kings, since it receives not merely honor but worship. Very well; five years ago, when the troubles concerning the frontier line arose between Great Britain and Siam, it was presently manifest that Siam had been in the wrong. Therefore every reparation was quickly made, and the British representative stated that he was satisfied and the past should be forgotten. This greatly relieved the King of Siam, and partly as a token of gratitude, but partly also, perhaps, to wipe out any little remaining vestige of unpleasantness which England might feel toward him, he wished to send the Queen a present-the sole sure way of propitiating an enemy, according to Oriental ideas. This present ought not only to be a royal one, but transcendently royal. Wherefore, what offering could be so meet as that of a white elephant?

"A delightfully informed path through the complexities of composition, publishing history, and the textual discontinuities that characterize so many of Twain's stories."—Journal of American Studies

"All modern American literature comes from one book called Huckleberry Finn," declared Ernest Hemingway. "There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since." Yet even from the time of its first publication in 1885, Mark Twain's masterpiece has been one of the most celebrated and controversial books ever published in America. No other story so central to our American identity has been so loved and so reviled as Huck Finn's autobiography.

No one ever accused Mark Twain of being a shrinking violet. Here is Twain as you've never read him before. Written as content for his autobiography, this is only some of the material the editor left out. After personal and business setbacks, this is an angrier, sometimes bitter, but still very funny Twain. Mark skewers Teddy Roosevelt, former business partners, various literary people, and recalls his meeting with Winston Churchill. He tell the tale of selling a dog that he didn't own to a general that he didn't know. And, relevant to today, he takes on the American plutocracy. For the first time, this long out-of-print volume is available as an affordable, well-formatted book for e-readers and smartphones. Be sure to LOOK INSIDE by clicking the cover above or download a sample.

This book provides an overview of Mark Twain's work and a close critical analysis of the forms and themes of his major texts. The author uses recent cultural and literary theory to re-examine Twain's travel writing and fiction, writing in a jargon-free and accessible manner. He focuses on Twain's humour and his attitudes to such subjects as boyhood, nationality, race relations, technology, and capitalist expansion, and shows how his work reflects anxieties both about changes in the social and industrial order in post Civil-War America and the status of the individual within it.

This broad-ranging companion brings together respected American and European critics and a number of up-and-coming scholars to provide an overview of Twain, his background, his writings, and his place in American literary history. One of the most broad-ranging volumes to appear on Mark Twain in recent years Brings together respected Twain critics and a number of younger scholars in the field to provide an overview of this central figure in American literature Places special emphasis on the ways in which Twain's works remain both relevant and important for a twenty-first century audience A concluding essay evaluates the changing landscape of Twain criticism