Pudd'nhead Wilson: And Those Extraordinary Twins

by Mark Twain

Determined that her baby son Tom shall not share her fate and remain in slavery, Roxy secretly exchanges him with his playmate Chambers, the son of her master. The two boys' lives in the quiet Missouri town of Dawson's Landing remain entwined even though they take very different directions. The indulged Tom (now heir to a fortune rightfully that of Chambers) goes to Yale, where he learns how to drink and gamble, while Chambers looks set to remain a subservient drudge. But then a strange sequence of events begins - one in which the much-derided lawyer, 'Pudd'nhead' Wilson, has a key part to play - and changes everything. Darkly ironic, blending farce and tragedy, Pudd'nhead Wilson is a complex and fascinating depiction of human nature under slavery.

Genres: Classics, Fiction, Humor, Literature, 19th Century, School, Novels

128 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1894

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist and essayist. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced," with William Faulkner calling him "the father of American literature." His novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), with the latter often called the "Great American Novel." Twain also wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) and Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894), and co-wrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) with Charles Dudley Warner.

Reviews

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5, rounded up. Not my favorite Twain, but quite worth the reading.

Pudd’nhead Wilson is a tragedy masquerading as a farce, or maybe a farce masquerading as a tragedy. As was always true with Twain, he writes comedy that is so cutting that it can barely mask the underlying seriousness of his subject. The subject is slavery, and the farce is necessary, for the tragedy is real.

In this novel, two babies are switched at birth, one a master the other a slave, and through that prism we are able to view some important contrasts--nature vs. nurture, loyalty vs. betrayal, and a mother’s love vs. a father’s indifference. Twain is at home with this device, as he loves to turn tails on his characters: The Connecticut Yankee who finds himself in another century; the Prince and the Pauper, another set of switched children; even Huck, who finds himself transported from a world in which slavery is the norm to one in which a man can be set free. But this is his most ambitious switch-up, because this switch touches at the core of what makes a man who he is.

Beyond the racial theme is the theme of loyalty and betrayal that is truly stark and brutal. There is one event in the book that makes me shiver, despite the frivolous tone and lightness of the telling. If viewed for even one second in a serious manner, this book would turn your blood to ice water. I have long thought comic genius arises from tragedy, think of Robin Williams or Richard Pryor, or think of Mark Twain. If you know his life, you know it must have very often been the case that he insisted on laughing to prevent crying. I’m not certain there ever existed a sharper wit or a more astute mind.

You know I am going to be partial to anyone who would write this: A home without a cat--and a well-fed, well-petted and properly revered cat--may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove title?

One of the things I truly enjoyed about this particular novel were the entries into Pudd’nhead’s Calendar. A few examples:

Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.

The holy passion of friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money.

Consider well the proportions of things. It is better to be a young Jane-bug than an old bird of paradise.

There are days when I particularly feel that last one!

One of my favorite characters here was Roxy, the mother who does the switch-a-roo. She is a prime example of the person in charge might not be the person you think, and her quick mind saved the day more than once. Her weakness--that blasted kid.

Glad to have finally read it. Wouldn't really want to have to say there was a Twain I had not experienced.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is definitely a well-kept secret. There are a lot of unknown Twain novels that are quite good, but this is sometimes referred to by critics as the third of his truly American novels. I like this book, and considering I had to write a whole research paper on it that's saying something. As a story its good, with a murder mystery, daggers, children switched at birth, etc... But on a deeper level it deals with slavery and miscegenation, humanity and the nature v. nurture concept. Very interesting. There is also a lot of humor, particularly if you have a cynical and sarcastic side. The aphorisms at the beginning of ever chapter from Wilson's Almanac are priceless.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

4 stars for Pudd'nhead Wilson, 2 stars for Those Extraordinary Twins.

[Kate♡ · Rating 2 out of 5]

2/5stars

"Tom" is a fucking asshole, Roxy is a horrible woman/mother and Twain's writing style is obnoxious as fuck. only giving it 2 stars rather than 1 because it wasn't as horrible as huck finn at least

[Ira Therebel · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really great book where the only thing I wasn't crazy about was the dialect of the black people which was hard to go through but it didn't take away from the pleasure of reading it. Otherwise the book is pretty much perfect. It is entertaining while also talking about serious topic.

The story is fun to read. It may be a tragedy as described by Mark Twain and yet he wrote it with a lot of humor and the plot is interesting from the beginning to the end . And while being entertained we also get a look at not such a fun theme which is race and slavery. It was written after the abolishment of slavery so it isn't extra ordinary that slavery is presented to the reader as negative but Mark Twain gives a very clever critique to racial prejudice. We see how different the lives of people who seem so alike turn out just because one of them is 1/31 black. And besides this simple look at race Mark Twain also gives us a look at ugliness of power and imaginary superiority by making "Tom" become a horrible kid and then adult once he is switched and becomes white enjoying his power over people like him whom he sees as inferior to him.

Roxy is also a special character. She is not written as a mammy caricature. Roxy doesn't enjoy being a slave and taking care of her master's kids. She is a mother who makes sure that her kid is getting the better life and sacrifices herself for him. We don't get to know much of her life as a free woman but it seems like she had seen a lot by traveling unlike other characters who spend all the time in the same town. Her character seems to be more complex than any other character in the book.

We also see how Puddn'head Wilson is looked at as a dumb one while he is the one who knows the most and is able to solve a big mystery because of what he did while the town were laughing at him. Like society that rejects something because they don't understand it.

And the ending seems like fair at the end but then if one thinks more one could say that it is actually a tragedy as it goes by the unfair rules of racial discrimination and slavery.

The second part, Those Extraordinary Twins, should have been part of the main novel but Mark Twain decided to take it out and present as a separate short story. And it was a right decision since it would take too much attention away from the main plot. In this case it is a farce about two Siamese twins. Two individuals who share a body but are so very different. While it is a humorous story it still makes one think.

I didn't even know what an extraordinary author Mark Twain is. His writing style is awesome and the story with all the entertainment and social criticism in it is definitely on a higher level.

[Simon Robs · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is only a finger's difference between a wise man and a fool.
Diogenes

Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie,
Kissed the girls and made them cry,
When the girls came out to play,
Georgie Porgie ran away.

This tale's Tom was a thief, a coward, a crow an a traitor/usurper to his ill-gotten fortune thus/and/so his downfall was smudged until fingertip noosed!

[Neill Bates · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.23 ✴️

[Jude Martyński · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little too muddled for me.

[Barnaby Hazen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terrific classic. Genesis of CSI, if you think about it--early courtroom drama. I'd really be interested to know when the concept of the fingerprint being used as evidence came about, because Twain did a great job presenting it as if for the first time in this little historical town.

So there's this other item of personal note, meant especially for authors currently alive and writing. Twain's use of colloquial, phonetic language on behalf of African American slaves is beyond reproach given what he did to call attention to unfair treatment of people of color. He was arguably one of the first civil rights activists, if authorship can itself be considered activism, which I strongly believe.

In this book, the fact that I find phonetic use of colloquial speech distracting as a reader did not bother me other than early on, while I was adjusting; all the while I was certain that it would be well worth the patience in adjusting to the phonetic representations, and indeed I was far from disappointed.

So I take this review as an opportunity to make a side-note to other authors--I beg you, please don't spell colloquial speech patterns out painstakingly, and just as they sound as a habit throughout your manuscripts or publications. Split the difference somehow--maybe give us a taste and make references to it with a word or two as you go, if you're afraid we'll forget there's an accent in place. It's just distracting. Twain was entitled to this, you are not; get over it and write in the language you have chosen, leading us with the colloquial in the least distracting way that you can and still keep it represented, or I's gwine tuh give ya a whuping!

[Cody · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cantankerous and bitter Twain may be my very favorite of all. Though no one would call this his greatest work, it ranks amongst his most scathing. His sights were set on the immorality of slavery and the false promise of religion. The best barbs, against man or God, are reserved for chapter headings doubling as entries for the would-be calendar of Pudd’nhead Wilson, the man whose first words to his new neighbors in a tiny hamlet of a town are (paraphrasing), “[Regarding a loudly barking dog] I wish I owned half of that dog. [Townie: ‘Why?’] So I could kill my half.”

[norah · Rating 4 out of 5]

⭐️=4.75 | 😘=1 | 🤬=4 | ⚔️=4 | 🍺/🚬=2 | 16+

thoughts: Mark Twain the genius that you are… literally writing about critical race theory before he has the language to talk about it, race is a social construct et cetera. like these stories are so weird but so brilliant

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Pudd'nhead Wilson, I think you're the biggest fool I ever saw."
"Thank you."
"Don't mention it."

Witty (and snarky) as ever. The one thing I will always love about Mark Twain is that he can make me laugh. He writes so many jokes and snide remarks, and some of them are so subtle, that you feel a few must be by accident, but, no. Twain is much too particular for that. He is a a true wordsmith and it's obvious how carefully he chooses every word for the exact effect he intends.

One thing I found particularly amusing was that he named one of his characters Rowena. I may be reading too much into this, but the name Rowena was popularized by Sir Walter Scott (she was a main character in his book Ivanhoe) and Twain openly despised Scott (in Life on the Mississippi Twain wrote, "He did measureless harm; more real and lasting harm, perhaps, than any other individual that ever wrote."). In these stories, Rowena is a "light-weight heroine" and not a particularly admirable character. It's my guess that Twain just loved to disparage Scott's themes/characters every chance he could in an attempt to undo the influence of Scott who Twain believed set "the world in love with dreams and phantoms; with decayed and swinish forms of religion; with decayed and degraded systems of government; with the sillinesses and emptinesses, sham grandeurs, sham gauds, and sham chivalries of a brainless and worthless long-vanished society." Again, maybe I'm seeing things that aren't there, but it seems wholly in keeping with Twain's character and style to name the vapid and ridiculous female after one of Scott's most famous heroines and it made me chuckle.

Pudd'nhead Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins are two works that are linked in a very interesting way. I pretty much assume that any "notes from the author" are facetious, but the way he writes it is that he started with the story for Those Extraordinary Twins and the characters/plot that make up Pudd'nhead Wilson sort of took over and crowded them out. So Twain concludes Pudd'nhead Wilson and takes up with Those Extraordinary Twins in a much shorter story at the end (one that shares many of the same characters and events but with much different elements/conclusions). Both works were interesting and refreshingly unique. Both really should be read together to get the full effect.

Twain dealt a lot with the themes of slavery and prejudice and Pudd'nhead Wilson (not so much Those Extraordinary Twins) has probably more to do with those than anything else I've read of his so far (including Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn). With it's use of the N-word and blatant stereotypes, I'm sure many modern readers would find it offensive. But when you account for the historical context, I think Twain more often than not was purposefully attempting to mock racial prejudice and expose the ridiculousness of it. Still, this was written in the 1890s and it's a product of its age (even if Twain seems, to me at least, to be above many of his peers in these areas). I think it makes a very interesting story out of issues of human nature and that still has value today (and not necessarily just for entertainment...though it was very entertaining).

[R.G. Ziemer · Rating 1 out of 5]

A couple years ago I found this nice illustrated and boxed collector’s copy of Pudd’nhead Wilson at the excellent book store in Virginia City, NV. It’s a classy-looking illustrated volume with some color prints, a foreword from Mark Twain, and the Pudd’nhead Wilson’s “calendar” of sayings as an appendix. Finally got around to reading it, and I’ve got to say, I’m disappointed.

First of all, the binding was so dried out that it cracked when I opened it. Oh, well. Books are for reading, not for looking pretty on the shelf. No, the real disappointment is with the author I so respect and admire. I couldn’t have guessed Mark Twain could produce such a volume of racist clichés with the cleverness and subtlety of a minstrel show. I ordinarily don’t respond to political correctness and modern revisionism, but this book seems to have been written to the lowest social and intellectual level of its own time.

The story features two boys switched in the cradle by their caricature of a black slave nanny. One is the son of a prominent Missouri man and the other son of an unknown shiftless black man, but both are light-skinned and remarkably alike. The fateful switcheroo results in the “white” child being consigned to the life of a household slave, and the “black” one endowed with all the benefits his well-to-do family can give. Throughout his life, the undiscovered black (himself unaware of his parentage) is a nasty, thankless, morally bankrupt, miserable human being. It is the eccentric lawyer Pudd’nhead Wilson who discovers the truth as the ridiculous tale moves from farce to tragedy. Well, even Shakespeare indulged in dumb plots of mistaken identity and such, too, providing low-brow laughs for the groundlings. Still, I can’t believe Mark Twain wrote this mess, and then went so far as to publish it.

[Shannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though I love Huck and Jim, Roxana of Twain’s “Puddn’head Wilson” is far more complexly rendered. It is through her that Twain's most explicit indictment of slavery is made. Her choice to allow her wretch of a son to sell her down the river and deeper into slavery after she has spent the last twenty years as a free woman touches the very corners of human sympathy. My only complaint is that I wanted to see more of her. She sweeps into the narrative briefly and then disappears for twenty pages at a time. For me, Twain's preoccupations with twins, dueling, and the then nascent science of fingerprinting muddle the text and detract from the force of his most compelling character.



In the humorous short story “Those Extraordinary Twins,” Twain takes a closer look at the relationship between twins and ultimately, the internal conflict of a divided self. The story works better from a narrative perspective than “Pudd’nhead Wilson." Yet, together these pieces give a fascinating look at the writing process of one of our best loved authors, as he directly comments on the revision and separation of the novella that became “Pudd’nhead Wilson” and the short story now known as “Those Extraordinary Twins.”



I give it four stars because it’s funny and moving as only Twain can be.

[Lainie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book group selection, otherwise I can't imagine I would have chosen to read this. But I'm so glad I did. It was fun! Mark Twain's writing is famous for many reasons, but in this book I especially noticed how timeless his humor is. He conveys the irony of human foibles like no one else.

In this edition, you get Pudd'nhead Wilson in the first half of the book, and it's great. Then, the second half reproduces Those Extraordinary Twins, which he starts off by telling you that it's an earlier idea that morphed into Pudd'nhead Wilson, and how. He delivers sections of his original novel, pointing out where he kept or diverted to tell the PW story. It's quite interesting and even delivers more laughs. Like outtakes at the end of a film.

Fun score: 8 out of 10

Recommended!

[N A · Rating 2 out of 5]

You can tell that this was written at the end of his career. It's like he's so exhausted with life and humanity that he doesn't bother with fully developing any characters or themes, and so it's one long meandering story with occasional moments of brilliance. At times it feels like reading a stream of consciousness. I wish he had happened on this concept at an earlier point in his life when he had more energy and perhaps wasn't quite so jaded.

Sam, I know you needed the money, but I think you would have been better served by spending your time elsewhere.

[Nathan Jerpe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I went for the Oxford Mark Twain edition. Highly recommended. If you're going to spend time with the master, do it right. The edition is in hardback and it's a facsimile of the original 1893 printing, so you get all the illustrations and orthographic oddities.

This is my second OMT out of twenty-nine total. I've been thinking it'd be a nice life project to sit down and read them all.

[R.K. Cowles · Rating 4 out of 5]

3 3/4 stars

[Kathie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 rounded down. It was hard to follow this story somehow when we were driving - started it while on a 3 day trip. One of the characters on audiobook is voiced with a raspy voice and is hard to hear with road noise. About half way through, weeks later, I started listening again. The second half of the book was more interesting - maybe because there was no road noise. The book turns into a mystery for the townspeople to solve. An interesting aspect of the book (and as you can imagine, plays into the ending), is the discussion of fingerprints. The book must have come out before fingerprints were well known as identifiers - the towns folk are “astonished” by the discussion of them.

[Jeff Clausen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Believe the title, “The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson”, as this is no comedy. It stated as a farce but the outrageous parts were tossed and the comedy that remained is dark. Still, it is the work of a true master and, except for the over abundance of the N word, reads smoothly and swiftly. Some of the best parts are the aphorisms that start each chapter, small bits of brilliance that light up all the following pages, until a new set appears. Twain saw this country’s ridiculous attitude toward race, put it down for all to see, and here we are 100+ years later, still struggling mightily. But reading this will help you know where your true north is when considering your fellow countrymen.

[Kanako Okiron · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm glad my introduction to Mr Mark Twain was by reading his extraordinary book Pudd'nhead Wilson, which always brings a smile to my face every time I say it. However, I was unable to find the commonly uttered quote about the watermelon that you find in many places which was a little bit of a let-down for me.

[Andrada Scaun · Rating 3 out of 5]

The actual highlights for me were the witty excerpts from Wilson’s calendar at the beginning of each chapter.

[Jared · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The reader already knew how the expert works; he knows now how the other kind do it."

[Walter · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson is one of the more obscure works of Mark Twain, which is a shame. Twain wrote this novel toward the end of the 19th Century, but it was set in the Missouri of the 1830s to 1850s. This is the setting for many of Twain's most beloved novels, such as Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. Like those two novels, Pudd'nhead Wilson is a humorous work full of social criticism, particularly attacking the evils of the antebellum South, slavery, race relations and the class system.

This novel is full of irony. Pudd'nhead Wilson is a young lawyer recently moved to the Missouri river town of Dawson's Landing in 1830. Although he is probably the most intelligent man in town, he is called "Pudd'nhead" because a remark that he made shortly after arriving in town was misunderstood by the town's elders. The name stuck for decades despite Wilson's proof of his own intelligence. But Wilson is a relatively minor character in this story. The main story revolves around a slave woman named Roxanne who is 15/16 white, but who is considered black and a slave because one of her great grandparents was a black slave. She had a son by a white town elder, and this son was the same age as the son of her patrician master's young son, so the intrigue follows. Twain deals with the absurdity of race relations, the slavery system and "selling down the river" of an unwanted slave, and the honor and dueling conventions of the day. By the end of the novel, it turns into a mystery as one of the town elders is killed, and Pudd'nhead Wilson as the attorney for the defendant uses some 19th Century forensic science to reveal the killer as well as some decades old town secrets. The end of the novel is quite riveting and entertaining.

If you liked "Tom Sawyer" or "Huck Finn" and are interested in the antebellum South, or if you like a good humorous novel, I highly recommend "The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson."

[Octavia Cade · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of those variants on the Prince and the Pauper type tales, in which a young slave woman in the American almost-South (does Missouri count as the South? I've honestly no idea) swaps her baby with that of the man she is enslaved by. The two boys grow up into each other's place, but the story really has no interest in the white-child-turned-slave, it's all about the slave-turned-white-child, and I'm not sure how I feel about him being thoroughly a bad person. On the one hand, he's cosseted and spoilt by his vacuous purported relatives to an extent which would ruin any child, but on the other it smacks a little too much of the (unfounded, in this case) argument that nature is overcoming nurture. Which is of course bollocks, but which would be absolutely of a piece with the attitudes of the time... attitudes which Twain is admittedly skewering. The final line - which I won't spoil - is so pointed, so vicious and ridiculous at once that it is both the only line Twain could have ended this story on, and worth reading the entire book for. Which seems to give the impression that it's a bad book, now that I think of it, but it isn't. I genuinely liked it, but the sting in the tail is what really makes it.

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book falls into the "small town on the Mississippi" category of Twain's novels. The story seems a little scattered and has some characters and scenes that don't really serve any purpose. There are a few great characters - Roxana and Pudd'nhead - and the best bits of the novel are of course the entries from Pudd'nhead's calendar at the beginning of every chapter. I actually enjoyed the farce (Those Extraordinary Twins) better than the tragedy it turned into (Pudd'nhead Wilson).

[Avery · Rating 5 out of 5]

I never realized how awesome a writer Twain was until I finished this novel.

[Amy D.P. · Rating 4 out of 5]

An often over-looked short novel by Mark Twain. A very interesting commentary on race, visual markers of race, and culture. A short read that should be a classic.

[Walter Schretz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some really fine parts,,some real insight and acerbic humor.
The whole is not equal to the parts. Nevertheless worth reading
or rereading-it's quite short.

[P.S. Winn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mark Twain is amazing and anything by this author is a great read grand adventure, humor and extraordinary writing make this and all the author's books great for readers of all ages,