Amazon.com Review
Nearly nine decades after his death, Mark Twain remains an international icon. His white-maned, mustachioed image is instantly identifiable throughout the world, the very picture of probity and high spirits (which explains why he's become the poster boy for products as diverse as beer, billiard tables, sewing machines, pizza, and real estate). Perhaps more importantly, Twain's books have retained all their power to amuse and enrage. How is it possible for the creator of a 19th-century "boy's holiday book" (Twain's own description of
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer) to raise so many contemporary hackles? The answer is that Twain
is a contemporary writer. Not, of course, from a chronological point of view--he was born in Missouri in 1835 and died in 1910 (having insisted that "annihilation has no terrors for me"). But Twain was the first writer to elevate the American vernacular to a high art. Sidestepping the starched-shirt diction of his peers, he created an idiom that resembled (but did not precisely duplicate) the wayward, slangy, ungrammatical music of American conversation. No serious reader of Twain will want to do without the
Oxford Mark Twain. This 29-volume leviathan includes not only the major works but also a treasure trove of essays and short pieces, many of them unavailable for decades. Throw in the introductions to each volume (by such heavyweights as
Toni Morrison,
Kurt Vonnegut,
Cynthia Ozick,
Gore Vidal,
George Plimpton,
Bobbie Ann Mason, and
Walter Mosley), as well as the original illustrations, and you've got the book bargain of the millennium.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
?[
A Tramp Abroad] is delicious, whether you open it at the sojourn in Heidelberg, or the voyage down the Neckar on a raft, or mountaineering in Switzerland, or the excursion beyond the Alps into Italy.? ?William Dean Howells --
Review"This new collection of the works of Mark Twain, complete with thought-provoking introductions by more than two dozen of our finest contemporary writers, is destined to become a modern-day classic."--The Oregonian<br /><br />"The season finds no lack of major literary works. The most inpressive debut must be the new 29-volume Oxford Mark Twain. This is a wonderful set."--The Houston Chronicle<br /><br />"The most impressive gift for book lovers this Christmas has to be The Oxford Mark Twain, a 29-volume collection of works by the writer may consider the central figure in American Literature."--The Kansas City Star<br /><br />"Now a major publishing event puts Twain in the spotlight again."--The Lexington Herald-Leader<br /><br />"For its beautiful design, its thoughtfulness, and its inclusion of virtually everything of importance by this great, great writer...I cannot praise it too highly."--Ihe Toronto Globe and Mail<br /><br />"The Oxford Mark Twain offers many days' worth of almost undiluted reading pleasure--as well an an effective rebuke to the agenda-burdened know-nothings who want Huckleberry Finn excised from the curriculum."--Kirkus Reviews<br /><br />"The family Christams gift of the year."--The Memphis Commercial Appeal<br /><br />"In compiling this impressive stack of works by Twain, Fishkin matched each volume with an American writer and asked them to pen a personal introduction to the work. The list reads like a syllabus from an American contemporary lit class, including such imaginative pair-ups as Arthur Miller on Chapters from My Autobiography.--St. Petersburg Times<br /><br />"The Oxford Twain is the real thing."--Washington Post<br /><br />"What draws you into these books and keeps you there is Twain's very American but very indivdual voice: deadpan, wry, sly, and animated by a plainspoken honesty that's several miles down the river from respectability." --Entertainment Weekly
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
