Cover image for Pudd'n'head Wilson

Pudd'n'head Wilson

Author Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
Category Humor
Language English
Published 1894
Excerpt

inable comfort or necessity, which the Mississippi's communities could want, from the frosty Falls of St. Anthony down through nine climates to torrid New Orleans.

Dawson's Landing was a slaveholding town, with a rich, slave-worked grain and pork country back of it. The town was sleepy and comfortable and contented. It was fifty years old, and was growing slowly-- very slowly, in fact, but still it was growing.

The chief citizen was York Leicester Driscoll, about forty years old, judge of the county court. He was very proud of his old Virginian ancestry, and in his hospitalities and his rather formal and stately manners, he kept up its traditions. He was fine and just and generous. To be a gentleman--a gentleman without stain or blemish--was his only religion, and to it he was always faithful. He was respected, esteemed, and beloved by all of the community. He was well off, and was gradually adding to his store. He and his wife were very nearly happy, but not quite, for they had no children. The

ReviewsAdd a review for this title.

2006.06.24
Per-Niklas Taub

[Originally entitled The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson and the Comedy of Those Extraordinary Twins. P-N T]

Although neither one of Twain's most beloved nor his best known books, the novel known as "The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson", is nevertheless packed well enough with all of the luster of any of Twain's most famous novels. In fact, it is something of a paradigm of 19th Century writing-- there is a crime, a coutroom drama, twists and turns, and yet it is not a nod to mystery stories in general. The book is, in fact, biting and therefore stinging social commentary about southern life at that time (having been published on November 28, 1894), and still the commentary is no less relevant to our own time.

"The Tragedy of Puddin' Head Wilson" is, of Twain's later work, less dark and heavily pensive, still he points out that in America racial prejudice is the crimes-- and of course slavery at any time in any history of any people.
And that may be what makes the book, on one level worth a read. It doesn't hurt that it is a MArk Twain novel, that the characters are very well developed-- non more so than the female character of Roxy.

Worth a read, for certain, and if it were a feast for the belly as well: two Michelin stars.