Pudd’nhead Wilson, the novel that grew out of Those Extraordinary Twins, is Mark Twain’s most direct statement about slavery and miscegenation. David Wilson and Roxana are two of Twain’s most vividly drawn characters. The original tale about the Twins, pulled out of the much larger manuscript, has not been frequently available. From the first serialized printing of Pudd’nhead Wilson in the Century Magazine in 1893 and 1894 until the publication of the first Norton Critical Edition, every published version was rife with textual errors.

Pudd’nhead Wilson, the novel that grew out of Those Extraordinary Twins， is Mark Twain’s most direct statement about slavery and miscegenation. David Wilson and Roxana are two of Twain’s most vividly drawn characters. The original tale about the Twins, pulled out of the much larger manuscript, has not been frequently available. From the first serialized printing of Pudd’nhead Wilson in the Century Magazine in 1893 and 1894 until the publication of the first Norton Critical Edition, every published version was rife with textual errors. The present version, the only edition based on completely reedited texts, takes into account all versions that the author could have had a hand in influencing. All substantive variants, accepted and rejected, along with hundreds of nonsubstantive variants, are included, accompanied by extensive textual notes. This is the only definitive, authoritative version of the texts published. Dozens of illustrations from the first American edition (1894) are included for both texts.

Five contemporary reviews--one of them new to this Second Edition--are followed by a rich collection of critical interpretations. From the large body of Twain scholarship, the editor has selected eighteen critical essays likely to stimulate classroom discussion, including new essays by John Matson and Andrew Jay Hoffman and pieces by Linda Morris, Carolyn Porter, Myra Jehlen, John Carlos Rowe, and Susan Gillman, among others.

A Selected Bibliography is also included.

Preface to the First Edition

Preface to the Second Edition

End-of-Line Hyphenation in This Volume

The Text of Pudd’nhead Wilson

The Text of Those Extraordinary Twins

Textual Introduction and Tables of Variants

  Pudd’nhead Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins:

 Textual Introduction

  Pudd’nhead Wilson

 Emendations of the Copy-Text: Substantives

 Emendations of the Copy-Text: Substantives

   (Lengthy Passages)

 Emendations of the Copy-Text: Accidentals

 Rejected Variants: Substantives

 Textual Notes

  Those Extraordinary Twins

 Emendations of the Copy-Text: Substantives

 Emendations of the Copy-Text: Substantives

   (Lengthy Passages)

 Emendations of the Copy-Text: Accidentals

 Rejected Variants: Substantives

 Textual Notes

  Appendix l: The Weather Signs Passage Deleted from

  Pudd’nhead Wilson

 Appendix 2: Words Deleted from Chapter 9 of Those

Extraordinary Twins

Criticism

REVIEWS

William Livingston Alden · From The Idler

  (August 1894)

From The Athenaeum (January 19, 1895)

Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen · From Cosmopolitan

  (January 1895)

From The Critic (May 11, 1895)

T.M. Parrott · From The Booklover’s Magazine

  (February 1904)

  ESSAYS

Bernard De Voto · [Mark Twain’s Presentation

  of Slavery]

Leslie Fiedler · "As Free as Any Cretur..."

F.R. Leavis · Mark Twain’s Neglected Classic:

  The Moral Astringency of Pudd’nhead Wilson

Henry Nash Smith · [Pudd’nhead Wilson as

  Criticism of the Dominant Culture]

James M. Cox · The Ironic Stranger

Arlin Turner · Mark Twain and the South:

  Pudd’nhead Wilson

George M. Spangler · Pudd’nhead Wilson:

  A Parable of Property

John M. Brand · The Incipient Wilderness:

  A Study of Pudd’nhead Wilson

Stanley Brodwin · Blackness and the Adamic

  Myth in Mark Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson

Arthur G. Pettit · The Black and White Curse:

  Pudd’nhead Wilson and Miscegenation

Barry Wood · Narrative Action and Structural

  Symmetry in Pudd’nhead Wilson

John Matson · The Text That Wrote Itself:

  Identifying the Automated Subject in Pudd’nhead

  Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins

Andrew Jay Hoffman · Pudd’nhead Wilson and

  the Roots of Existential Heroism

Linda A. Morris · Beneath the Veil: Clothing, Race,

  and Gender in Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson

Carolyn Porter · Roxana’s Plot

Myra Jehlen · The Ties That Bind: Race and Sex

  in Pudd’nhead Wilson

John Carlos Rowe · Fatal Speculations: Murder,

  Money, and Manners in Pudd’nhead Wilson

Susan Gillman · "Sure Identifiers": Race, Science,

  and the Law in Pudd’nhead Wilson

Selected Bibliography