Mark Twain: Complete Works

by Mark Twain

This carefully crafted ebook: "The Complete Works of Mark Twain" is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. This is The Complete Works of America's favourite storyteller Mark Twain. The eBook contains over 60 novels and shorter texts (short stories, essays, letters, speeches). Twain began his career writing light, humorous verse, but evolved into a chronicler of the vanities, hypocrisies and murderous acts of mankind. At mid-career, with Huckleberry Finn, he combined rich humor, sturdy narrative and social criticism. Twain was a master at rendering colloquial speech and helped to create and popularize a distinctive American literature built on American themes and language. Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835 – 1910), better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. He wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), the latter often called "the Great American Novel."

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Novels

7732 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 31, 2018

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist and essayist. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced," with William Faulkner calling him "the father of American literature." His novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), with the latter often called the "Great American Novel." Twain also wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) and Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894), and co-wrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) with Charles Dudley Warner.

Reviews

[Patrick Peterson]

2026-07-18 I bought this a while back, but did not start it till a month or so ago. This Kindle edition is super cheap ($1) and HUGE (over 7000 pages!), but the editing is pretty mediocre, at best. VERY many typos, since it was probably converted from other editions and not edited hardly at all. So, one has to really be creative and easy-going with the words on the page, and guess at what many really should be, if they don't make any sense or perhaps just don't fit well.

For this book, after going through the table of contents several times, and considering the books I had already read of Twain (Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and many short stories) I chose to first read inn thee novel, NOT the nonfiction section of the book: the "Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc." which seemed like a decent regular history of the topic, to me, first and actually liked it quite a bit.

It was VERY detailed. He must have spent quite a bit of time researching and writing it. He focused on how pure Joan was and how being possessed by the spirit of her "voices" (from God) she was incredibly motivating to lead her fellow French countryMEN to throw-off the English rule of so much of the country. It is still amazing how truly heroic, inspired and smart this 16-18 year old girl was, even after 600 years of reflection and research. Her enemies, first the English, and French military who were allied/subservient to them, then the French Churchmen who were currying favor with the English, were drawn in very realistic and quite disparaging ways. The voice/narration of the story was by a supposed childhood friend of Joan's who was taught reading and writing, something Joan never learned, and followed her throughout her time portrayed. A bit unrealistic, since Twain was totally guessing at what Joan said in various settings where this narrator could not have been, but that is of little count. I have not read any other books on Joan of Arc, but I have:
- read many brief historical accounts
- been to Rouen where she was put on trial and burned at the stake
- seen the classic 1928 silent movie "The Passion of Joan of Arc"
None of which stick in my mind as contradicting anything Twain writes in this story.
If you have an interest in any of the above or:
- unique view of this period of French/English history
- leadership traits - what can really motivate/demotivate people to believe and follow you
- acts of heroism and faith
- hypocrisy and cravenness vs. honor, truth and character
Give this historical "novel" a try. Twain is a master.

The next book I started was the novel "The American Claimant" which starts of very strangely. It describes a very proud/arrogant/false "Earl" who has a son imbued with the republican ideal of equality (liberal "before the law" type primarily, not as much the destructive egalitarian/socialist aspects), who rebels against him and his "birthright." The story gets quite complicated with alternative legal claims and geographic moving's between continents and a whole set of different characters and situations. But hang in there, since some GREAT stuff happens and very realistic and relatable to today things happen and observations are made.
Sooooooo relevant to today's changed Zeitgeist and "ideals."
I am not yet finished with the book, but it is vastly easier and better to read than the beginning and I love where it seems to be going.

I'd love to hear from anyone who has read this "American Claimant" and what she/he thought.