LARGE PRINT EDITION The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson / The Tragedy of Puddinghead Wilson (Cambridge World Classics) Special Kindle Enabled Features (Large Print Unabridged Mark Twain)

I'm not a Twain aficionado, but in the interest of better knowing my Southern literary 'roots', I've been trying to read some of his less popular works. The Mysterious Stranger was better, in my opinion. However, this was quite the interesting look into the lives of small town residents, slaves and slave owners, with the intrigue of a murder mystery. There was some humor. Mostly it was the drama of their lives, the suspense of a good whodunnit, and the tragic end of...well, I'll leave you to find that out. Twain built the intensity of the narrative well and I found myself reading faster and faster the closer I got to the end. Recommended.

Without a doubt, Mark Twain is one of the most gifted people in history to ever put words to paper. In The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson, the book is basically two stories: the first, a white child of privilege and a slave being switched at birth and the second, a murder mystery involving Italian twins. Pudd'nhead Wilson is the central character, an eccentric lawyer who loves to collect fingerprints on slides of everyone in town. It's interesting to look back upon a world of slavery, small towns and the quiet uneasiness that permeates everything. And the fingerprints! Twain basically predated the use of fingerprints in a murder trial by about 10 years to prove innocence.Overall, a great work of literature, and makes for a quick read.

The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson is a mystery of sorts. It's starts out explaining characters and the town in which most of the book is set. At the beginning a plot changing twist happens which instantly hooks you into the book. I liked each character for who they were and each of them were realistic. The story is slow and wines itself and then unwines slowly as well, but don't let that turn you off. The story isn't long and if you sit down for thirty minutes a day you can have the book read in a week. Be warned though that it is set during slavery and the vocabulary for dialogue reflects that.

I just loved this tale by Mark Twain. A slave is worried that she might be sold down the river. She switched the her boy and the judge's nephew while they were babies. Wilson collected fingerprints when he first come to Dawson Landing. He is a lawyer by trade but cannot get any work not until two twins come to town and then accused of killing the judge. It takes an interesting twist at the end.

Pudd'nhead Wilson is one of Twain's most brilliant writings (in my opinion). I read this story many years ago in school and never forgot it. But, it is a story in which Twain is writing at his darkest. He seems to be pointing out the faults of all his characters -- not as forgiving of imperfections as he was with Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. He seems to be pointing a finger at humanity and saying, "You err!" Despite the darkness, the plot is fascinating.

This is a mess of a novel, as Twain admits and explores in his afterward. It has a two headed man, a cross dressing thief, and Twain skewers , as only he can, racism, dueling, American genocides, the Old South, and America's other societal shames. Laughing while your heart is breaking is a strange sensation.

Great book

This a fun read.. very entertaining.

This novel is set in pre-Civil War Missouri. It begins when a slave girl swaps her baby (who is one part black to thirty-one parts white) for her master's child of the same age in order to give her own son a better start in life. Her biological son is raised as a gentleman, Thomas, but grows up to be a spoilt, nasty character whilst the rightful heir is a strapping lad of good character but poorly educated. This whole plot raises many questions for me. Does it matter which child gets which upbringing? Is Twain implying that the one part African blood is responsible for Thomas's bad character or is it his spoilt upbringing? In the end is it right that Thomas gets his comeuppance? The reader may cheer that he gets what he deserves for the crimes he committed but it shows, once again, the inevitable outcome for being born with African blood.The book has many sub plots too including the arrival in town of exciting young Italian twins, a brutal murder and a trial for the murder. Pudd'nhead Wilson is the lawyer for the defence. He had arrived in the town many years before in order to practice as a lawyer but failed to get any customers after uttering a rather leftfield comment that caused everyone to believe him a fool. He was actually a well-liked and intelligent man with a hobby of collecting people's fingerprints, which go on to be crucial evidence in the murder trial. Whilst his forensic techniques were primitive, this is perhaps the first piece of fiction to detail the use of fingerprints in solving crimes.This book came as a surprise to me. The plot ran along nicely and is full of humour. The characters were well-drawn and there were many things to think about, particularly regarding the labelling of people and how they react to and overcome such prejudices. The end of the book is marvellous and I now know what it means to be 'sold down the river'.

I enjoyed the style of writing. The decriptions of characters and places are excellent. I also loved Mark Twain's humour, especially the chapter headings though he addresses serious issues in the book, especially slavery. The story takes many twists and turns until the court scene at the end brings justice, although we are left to wonder how the "real" Tom is going to cope with his new life.

Excellent story and well written. I have read this about five times over the years, it's very entertaining

Great story - one of Mark Twain's best and it was so easy to read on Kindle and it was free!!

DO NOT BUY this edition. I ordered it for my high school class and I've never been so disappointed with a book in my life. The typeface is difficult to read and was clearly chosen so as to cram as many words as possible on each page. The pages are not numbered. As for the "annotations", there is absolutely no commentary on the text, but only some biographical notes that appear to have been lifted verbatim, or in places slightly adated, from the Wikipedia entry on Mark Twain (I doubt that this is the source for Wikipedia.) Scandalous.