Reseña del libro "The Collected Shorter Works of Mark Twain: A Library of America Boxed Set"
For the first time in a collector's boxed set, the authoratative two-volume Library of America edition of Mark Twain's incomparable short writings -- the stories, sketches, burlesques, hoaxes, tall tales, speeches, satires, and maxims of America's greatest humorist. "Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand," Mark Twain once wrote. A master of deadpan hilarity, a storyteller who fashioned an exuberant style rooted in his western origins, and an enemy of injustice who used scathing invective and subtle satire to expose the "humbug" of his time, Twain, like Franklin, Whitman, and Lincoln, helped shape the American language into a unique democratic idiom that was to be heard around the world. Arranged chronologically and containing many pieces restored to the form in which Twain intended them to appear, this deluxe collector's boxed set shows with unprecedented clarity his literary evolution over the six decades of his career. As a riverboat pilot, Confederate irregular, silver miner, frontier journalist, publisher, and internationally acclaimed author, Twain witnessed the tragicomic beginning of the Civil War in Missouri, the frenzied opening of the West, the feverish corruption, avarice, and ambition of the Gilded Age, and the rise of U.S. imperialism. He wrote about political bosses, jumping frogs, robber barons, cats, women's suffrage, temperance, petrified men, the bicycle, the Franco-Prussian War, the telephone, the income tax, the insanity defense, injudicious swearing, and the advisability of political candidates preemptively telling the worst about themselves before others get around to it. This is the quintessential Mark Twain. Boxed set contains Mark Twain: Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, & Essays Vol. 1: 1852-1890, 1,076 pp., and Mark Twain: Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, & Essays Vol. 2: 1891-1910, 1,050 pp., volumes #60 and #61 in the Library of America series. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, más conocido como Mark Twain, ha pasado a la historia de la literatura gracias al ingenio, humor y picardía que destila su obra. A menudo considerado el Dickens estadounidense, Twain fue periodista, tipógrafo, escritor y, sobre todo, un aventurero incansable. Su sed de aventuras lo llevó en un largo periplo lleno de experiencias: fue aprendiz de piloto, buscó fortuna en las minas de plata, recorrió el mundo dando conferencias y fue nombrado doctor honoris causa por la universidad de Oxford. Todo ello lo inspiró para empezar a escribir pequeños cuadernos de viaje que publicaba en la prensa. Se calcula que llegó a escribir más de 500 obras, entre las que destacan _Las aventuras de Huckelberry Finn_ y _Las aventuras de Tom Sawyer_: dos novelas en las que Twain evoca una infancia inocente y feliz, en la que brillan la ilusión y la rebeldía que preceden a la edad adulta. Mark Twain nació durante una de las apariciones del cometa Halley, y predijo que “se marcharía con él”. Efectivamente, el autor nos dejó el 21 de abril de 1910, a la estela de una nueva visita del cometa.
Ver más
Ver menos
