A Murder, a Mystery, and a Marriage

By Mark Twain

Book Overview

Set in the quaint hollow of Deer Lick, a mythical town resembling Mark Twain's Hannibal, Missouri, this bizarre tale chronicles the fortunes of humble farmer John Gray, determined to marry off his daughter Mary to the scion of the town's wealthiest family.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393043762
• ISBN13: 9780393043761
• Release Date: September 2001
• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc
• Length: 80 Pages
• Weight: 0.99 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.8" x 0.3" x 6.5"

Customer Reviews

Interesting complement to Twain oeuvre

In 1876 Mark Twain proposed to William Dean Howells, the editor of the Atlantic Monthly, that a number of authors including Twain himself each write a story--"'blindfolded' as to what the others had written"--based on the same skeleton plot, which Twain would devise. In the end the idea came to nothing, or almost nothing, because Howells never managed to interest other authors in taking on the task. But Twain did write his own contribution to the project. His A Murder, A Mystery, and a Marriage is a curious story about a greedy farmer's attempts to line his pockets by marrying his daughter off to a wealthy suitor. The farmer's plot is complicated, however, by his estranged brother's will and by the appearance in town, under unusual circumstances, of a multilingual stranger. The mystery--there is, after all, a murder in the tale--is laid to rest in Twain's final chapter with the unlikely introduction of Jules Verne into the story. Twain never published his novella, and part of the manuscript was lost for more than a hundred years. It appeared in print for the first time in 2001. The Norton paperback of A Murder, A Mystery, and a Marriage includes four facsimile pages of Twain's manuscript and is beautifully illustrated with watercolors by Peter de S?ve. In a brief foreword and a nearly forty-page afterword Roy Blount Jr. discusses the history of the manuscript and places the story in the larger context of Twain's more familiar work and the politics of the day. It is not the most interesting of essays, but Twain fans who are sufficiently familiar with his oeuvre and with mid-nineteenth-century politics may appreciate it. Debra Hamel -- author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in ancient Greece (Yale University Press, 2003)

LOL! My first Mark Twain book...

This is my first Mark Twain book, and I got to say that I like it. For a short story, it's excellent and I usually don't like short stories.This story tells exactly what the title is: a murder, a mystery, and a marriage. They all are excellently incorporated into each other and all has a purpose.Also, the contributions from Roy Blount, Jr. and Peter de Sève are wonderful. The foreword and afterwords were informative about the book and the illustrations are beautifully, yet - in a way - comical. And the fact that this book is now first time published as one should cause a celebration.Excellent book.

A New Perspective, A Challenge, and a Snapper!

Those who read The Atlantic Monthly will probably be curious about how this book compares with the material that appeared in the August 2001 issue. As best I can tell, the primary differences are in the illustrations. The book has four larger facsimile pages of the manuscript while the magazine material had two smaller ones. The book has 9 water color illustrations while the magazine has three. Obviously, a bound book is a more handsome item than part of a magazine. But anyone who is interested in this book might want to examine the magazine version first. The "Skeleton Novelette" will probably seem to most people like just a slightly more developed version of a short story. Its text encompasses 8 magazine pages. By itself, this work would attract relatively little attention except for its newness to the reader. What makes the story appealing are the foreword and afterword by Roy Blount, Jr. Combined, these essays are longer than the story. The foreword explains the history of how the work came to be written and published. Of particular relevance is the reference to Mark Twain's "How to Tell a Story." Mark Twain (or Samuel Clemens, depending on your preference) wrote that "the rambling and disjointed humorous story finishes with a nub, point, snapper, or whatever you like to call it." Mr. Twain warns that "the listener must be alert, for in many cases the teller will divert attention from that nub by dropping it in a carefully casual and indifferent way . . . ." The risk, naturally, in using this approach is that the reader will fail to grasp or appreciate the snapper. You will also learn how Mark Twain conceived of this story in 1876 as his entry into a challenge against the leading writers of the day, including potentially William Dean Howells (The Atlantic Monthly's editor and his friend), Henry James, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, and Bret Harte. Mr. Twain charged Mr. Howells with interesting the other authors. Although Mr. Howells did his best, the project went nowhere. Fascinated by it, Mr. Twain went on to write his version. Mr. Twain had already written Tom Sawyer and was about halfway through Huckleberry Finn at this time. Mr. Twain did not pick up writing on Huckleberry Finn again until 1879 or 1880, and it was not published until 1885.The story itself is an unusual one for its time. As the title indicates, there's a murder and a mystery. The story also leads to a marriage, as the title also indicates. I can remember few short stories with so much action and diversity in them. The story also has several other unusual elements that I cannot comment upon without spoiling the story for you. The site of the story is Deer Lick, Missouri (which will remind most of Hannibal, Missouri. Two young people are interested in marrying, Mary Gray (aged 20) and young Hugh Gregory (aged 27). Mary's father, John, has his eye on the potential money involved. Young Hugh Gregory's father is one of the wealthiest m