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This long essay is a work of mock philology, one of several appendices to Twain’s travel novel, A Tramp Abroad. In it, Twain explains, complains about, and shows how one might improve upon various aspects of the (awful) German language. His examples of precisely how the German language is awful include the famed “separable verb” – which allows one to put the first part of a given verb at the beginning – and its second part at the end – of a given clause or sentence (which may, indeed, be very long). He also makes fun of the extreme length of certain compound nouns (which are ...

Growing up on the banks of the Mississippi river, a mischievous boy named Tom Sawyer spends his days getting into one scrape after another. Tom's constant cleverness, superstition, trickery, and daring make him a handful to raise, and his Aunt Polly declares that she has "never seen the beat of that boy!" Tom is essentially good-hearted, however, but when he is witness to a horrible crime, his courage and integrity are tested beyond anything he ever expected. A note to parents: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is considered a children's classic, but contains racial slurs which, although "...

The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories is a 1906 collection of 30 comic short stories by American humorist and writer Mark Twain. Published just 4 years before his death, this was the last time he chose works from throughout his career, in an effort to show the diversity of his style and the breadth and depth of his interests. (Introduction by John Greenman & Wikipedia )

The American Claimant is an 1892 novel by American humorist and writer Mark Twain. The story focuses on the class differences and expectations of monarchic, hierarchical Britain and the upstart, "all men are created equal" America. Twain wrote the novel with the help of phonographic dictation, the first author (according to Twain himself) to do so. This was also (according to Twain) an attempt to write a book without mention of the weather, the first of its kind in fictitious literature. Indeed, all the weather is contained in an appendix, at the back of the book, which the reader is ...

Las aventuras de Huck (Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) es una novela del escritor estadounidense Mark Twain (considerado el Dickens estadounidense), y publicada originalmente entre 1884 y 1885. La obra es considerada una secuela de su distante y exitosa predecesora Las aventuras de Tom Sawyer de 1876, con la cual mantiene una temática narrativa bastante similar. Las aventuras de Huckleberry Finn representa una de las primeras grandes novelas estadounidenses. También fue una de las primeras novelas escritas en inglés vernáculo estadounidense, particularmente hablado por el narrador y ...

These letters were arranged in two volumes by Albert Bigelow Paine, Samuel L. Clemens's literary executor, as a supplement to Mark Twain, A Biography, which Paine wrote. They are, for the most part, every letter written by Clemens known to exist at the time of their publication in 1917. They begin with a fragment of a letter from teenaged Sam Clemens to his sister, Pamela, and conclude with a letter to his attorney two weeks before his death.These letters give us some degree of insight into the evolution of Twain's style of speech and prose over the period of his lifetime; they are a small ...

A book of short stories and humorous anecdotes by Mark Twain, published together in 1906. (Summary by Tricia G)

Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) began writing his autobiography long before the 1906 publications of these Chapters from my Autobiography. He originally planned to have his memoirs published only after his death but realized, once he’d passed his 70th year, that a lot of the material might be OK to publish before his departure. These chapters were published in serial form in the North American Review during 1906-1907. While much of the material consists of stories about the people, places and incidents of his long life, there are also several sections from his daughter, which he calls “Susy’...

The Journal of Julius Rodman, Being an Account of the First Passage across the Rocky Mountains of North America Ever Achieved by Civilized Man is an unfinished serial novel by American author Edgar Allan Poe published in 1840. Six installments of the novel were published in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine's January through June issues in 1840. At the time, Poe was a contributing editor of the journal. He was fired from the job in June 1840 by William Burton and refused to continue the novel. - Summary by Wikipedia

Thérèse Raquin, trapped in a loveless marriage with her cousin Camille, plots with her lover Laurent to murder him so they can be married and happy, But the memory of their crime poisons their marriage and they sink into an abyss of guilt, hatred and madness. - Summary by The Narrator

A jealous husband sets out to murder his wife's lover, setting in motion an unstoppable series of events. Witness to the murder is a train driver who struggles to resist his uncontrollable desire to kill women. - Summary by Aaron Hackett

Die Abenteuer des Tom Sawyer (Originaltitel: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer) ist ein Roman des US-amerikanischen Schriftstellers Mark Twain. Das Buch erschien 1876 zugleich auch als deutsche Übersetzung."Die Abenteuer des Tom Sawyer" ist eine typische Lausbubengeschichte und spielt in der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts im kleinen Ort St. Petersburg am Mississippi. Der Waisenjunge Tom lebt bei seiner Tante Polly, zusammen mit seinem Halbbruder Sid, seiner Cousine Mary und dem schwarzen Sklaven Jim. Sid ist brav und verpetzt Tom bei jeder Gelegenheit. Tom hingegen schwänzt gern die Schule, prügelt ...

The Markets of Paris is a remarkable work, and is the one which Zola calls his very best novel, and of which he is far more proud than of any others in his Rougon-Marquart series – prouder than of L’Assommoir. It must have been in his early manhood, when poor and friendless, he lived among the people, that much of the information which makes these pages so startlingly vivid, was acquired. How many mornings, long before dawn, must he have visited these markets – how many hours and days must he have spent there, to have mastered the habits, manners and ways of these people, who are a class...

This epic about French coal miners and the burgeoning labor movement is considered one of Zola's finest novels. - Summary by Matt Pierard

Émile François Zola (French pronunciation: [emil zɔˈla]) (2 April 1840 – 29 September 1902) was an influential French writer, the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism. More than half of Zola’s novels were part of a set of twenty novels about a family under the Second Empire collectively known as Les Rougon-Macquart.L’Assommoir (1877) is the seventh novel in the series. Usually considered one of Zola’s masterpieces, the novel—a harsh and uncompromising study of alcoholism and poverty in the working-class districts of Paris—was a huge commercial success ...

The first book in the 20-novel Rougon-Macquart Cycle. A monument of French naturalism. The sprawling tale of a family in Provence, during the Second Empire, the family that grew out of the liaisons between Adelaide Fouque and her husband Rougons, and the smuggler Macquart. - Summary by Mark Leder

La vida transcurre plácida en un pequeño pueblo francés donde el tio Merlier gestiona hábilmente su molino. Los preparativos para el enlace entre su hija Francisca y el joven Domingo se verán interrumpidos por la llegada de un batallón francés que decide atrincherarse en el molino para frenar el avance de las tropas prusianas. Cuento largo en el que Zola plasma los dilemas y sufrimientos que la población civil tiene que soportar en medio de una guerra, en este caso un intrascendente episodio del conflicto franco-prusiano. (Introducción por Epachuko)

Cuentos a Ninon es un grupo de cuentos que involucra el género maravilloso, fantástico, el relato realista y hasta la fábula para describirnos el mundo y la sociedad que Zola vislumbraba y que finalmente describía en las profundidades de sus relatos. Hay una dosis de descreimiento y desesperanza en algunos pasajes de su prosa, como dejando ver el camino recorrido por la humanidad sin haber, al parecer, avanzado ni un paso. En otros deja ver los rayos dorados del sol que se asoman en un amanecer esperanzador y fabuloso. En otros sobrevuela en un tono realista para mostrarnos el mundo desde ...

El ensueño es una obra que forma parte de la serie de veinte novelas que Zola tituló “Les Rougon- Macquart”. Entre “La tierra y La bestia humana” surge “Le rêve” en ella nos cuenta una enternecedora historia de amor entre una niña huérfana y un noble. ( Montse González)

A well-to-do French farm family is destroyed by a flood. The story, thrilling to the very end, is told from the point of view of the family's 70-year-old patriarch. The story speaks of the helplessness of mankind in the face of the forces of nature. (Summary by Karen Merline)