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Outrageous Mark Twain : Some Lesser-Known but Extraordinary Works With 'Reflections on Religion'
Outrageous Mark Twain Some LesserKnown but Extraordinary Works With 'Reflections on Religion' Author:Charles Neider Table of Contents — 1. Introduction by Charles Neider — 2. Reflections on Religion — 3. 1601 — 4. Science of Onanism — 5. Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven — 6. Open Letter to Commodore Vanderbilt — 7. Goldsmith's Friend Abroad Again — 8. The Indignity Put Upon the Remains of George Holland by the Rev. Mr. Sabine... more »
9. John Camden Hotten
10. Mr. Duncan of the Quaker City
11. Mr. Duncan Once More
12. Is Shakespeare Dead?
13. Christian Science
Many readers of Mark Twain are unaware, or not much aware, of his extreme side. They take him to be an extraordinarily pleasing `funny" man, a marvelously genial spirit, a remarkable American humorist, and little more ...
Now meet an altogether different Mark Twain. In a compilation of the best of Twain's more controversial and provocative writings, distinguished Twain authority Charles Neider offers a rare and fascinating look at the darker, irreverent, obstreperous, and sometimes even shocking side of this American literary giant.
Although well known to Twain aficionados, many of the works in this collection have been out of print and unavailable for years. The essay "Reflections on Religion," for example, Twain's somber and long-suppressed attack on organized religion, appears here for the first time in book form, having been published only once in a 1963 edition of the scholarly journal The Hudson Review. Other selections include "Is Shakespeare Dead?", a partly Baconian view of the authorship of the Shakespeare works; -1601. Conversation, As It Was by the Social Fireside, in the Time of the Tudors," Twain's famous exercise in Elizabethan ribaldry, never officially published; "Open Letter to Commodore Vanderbilt," an uproarious example of the writer's talent in the uses of invective and sarcasm; plus many more curious and startling pieces.« less