Puddnhead Wilson and those Extraordinary Twins (1894)

The two narratives published together in The Tragedy of Puddnhead Wilson and the Comedy of Those Extraordinary Twins are overflowing with spectacular events. Twain shows us conjoined twins, babies exchanged in the cradle, acts of cross-dressing and racial masquerade, duels, a lynching, and a murder mystery. Puddnhead Wilson tells the story of babies, one of mixed race and the other white, exchanged in their cradles, while Those Extraordinary Twins is a farcical tale of conjoined twins. Although the stories were long viewed as flawed narratives, their very incongruities offer a fascinating portrait of key issuesrace, disability, and immigrationfacing the United States in the final decades of the nineteenth century.

Hsuan Hsus introduction traces the history of literary critics response to these works, from the confusion of Twains contemporaries to the keen interest of current scholars. Extensive historical appendices provide contemporary materials on race discourse, legal contexts, and the composition and initial reception of the texts. See more