ana, one-sixteenth colored, he created a Negro character with far more human reality than any writer had done before him.Personnel Recollections of Joan of Arc (1896) is a sentimental biography. Twains other later writing include short stories, the best known of which are “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg”(1899). It is a story exhibiting the effects of greed in a smug provincial town. The Mysterious Stranger, was published in 1916, after Twains death. The story, which exists in three versions, describes a visit by Satan to an Austrian village during the Middle Ages. This book of ultimate, scandalous truth, like Huck Finn, is for youthful readers. It is also the auquished cry from the heart of a man exiled from what he holds most dearly, the image he had of his boyhood. The Mysterious Stranger is a boy’s revenge on a world that has failed to live up to his expectations. Twain hoped to write a book that would horrify his own adult reading public, but the book is about an imaginary Kingdom where boys could live, roam and never grow up. Bernard DeVoto (essay date 1946) wrote,“It is an almost perfect book-perfect in expression of his final drive, in imaginative projection of himself, in tone and tune, in final judgment on the nature of man and the experience of Mark Twain. It is not, finally a major work; but in its small way it is a masterpiece. Those who know and love Mark Twain will find it as revealing as Huckleberry Finn.”10Since the 1960’s some people have come to view Mark Twain’s life and outlook as gloomy and even tragic. His later more bitter works, such as the Mysterious Stranger, were neglected in the years following his death, but they have recently received more attention, resulting in a broader understanding of Twain’s personality and works. Scholars recognize in Twain a man divided in outlook between comic and tragic perceptions of existence. Throughout his career Twain looked...
