Twain's ironic little novel, Pudd'nhead Wilson, is laid on the banks of the Mininippi in the first hail of the 1800s. It concerns itself with, among other things, the use of fingerprinting to solve the myshery of a murder. But Pudd'nhead Wilon is not a mystery novel. The mulet knows from the beginning who committed the murder and has more thanan-inkling of how it will be solved. The cixcumstances of the denouement, however, possessed in its time great novelty, for fingerprinting had not thin come into oflicial use in crimedetection in the United States.Even a man who fooled mound with it as a hobby was thought to be a simpleton, a puddnhead. Such was thereputation acquired by Wilson, the young,would-be lawyerin the Missouri frontier town .of Dawson s Landing. But Wilson eventually made his detractors appear as pudden-heads themselves.

At the beginning of Pudd"nhead Wilson a young slave woman, tearing for her infant son"s life, exchanges herlight-skinned child with her master"s. From this rather simple premise Mark Twain fashioned one of his most entertaining, funny, yet biting novels.

On its surface, Pudd"nhead Wilson possesses all the elements of an engrossing nineteenth-century mystery reversed identities, a horrible crime, an eccentric detective, a suspensefut courtroom drama, and a surprising, unusual solution, Yet it is not a mystery novel Seething with the undercurrents of antebellum southern culture, the book is a savage indictment in which the real criminal is society, and racial prejudice and slavery are the crimes.

INTRODUCTION,BY LANGSTON HUGHES

A WHISPER TO THE READER

PUDD"NHEAD WINS HIS NAME

DRISCOLL SPARES HIS SLAVES

ROXY PLAYS A SHREWD TRICK

THE WAYS OF THE CHANGELINGS

THE TWINS THRILL DAWSON"S LANDING

SWIMMING IN GLORY

THE UNKNOWN NYMPH

MARSE TOM TRAMPLES HIA CHANCE

TOM PRACTISES SYCOPHANCY

THE NYMPH REVEALED

THE NYMPH REVEALED

PUDD"NHEAD"S STARTLING DISCOVERY

THE SHAME OF JUDGE DRISCOLL

TOM STARES AT RUIN

ROXANA INSISTS UPON REFORM

THE ROBBER ROBBED

SOLD DOWN THE RIVER

"THE JUDGE UTTERS DIRE PROPHECY

TOXANA COMMANDS

THE PROPHECY REALIZED

THE MURDERER CHUCKLES

DOOM