Essay

On the Decay of the Art of Lying is a short essay written by Mark Twain in 1880 for a meeting of the Historical and Antiquarian Club of Hartford, Connecticut. Twain published the text in The Stolen White Elephant Etc. (1882). In the essay, Twain laments the four ways in which men of America's Gilded Age employ man's 'most faithful friend'. He concludes by insisting that: “The wise thing...

Transcribed from the 1880 Chatto and Windus edition by David Price.

These speeches will address themselves to the minds and hearts of those who read them, but not with the effect they had with those who heard them; Clemens himself would have said, not with half the effect. I have noted elsewhere how he always held that the actor doubled the value of the author's words; and he was a great actor as well as a great author. He was a most consummate actor, with this...

How to Tell a Story and Other Essays (1897) is a series of essays by Mark Twain. In them he describes his own writing style, attacks the idiocy of a fellow author, defends the virtue of a dead woman, and tries to protect ordinary citizens from insults by railroad conductors.

[Date: 1601.] Conversation, as it was by the Social Fireside, in the Time of the Tudors or simply 1601 is the title of a short risquésquib by Mark Twain, first published anonymously in 1880, and finally acknowledged by the author in 1906. Written as an extract from the diary of one of Queen Elizabeth I's ladies-in-waiting, the pamphlet purports to record a conversation between Elizabeth...

Selected from the favourite articles of the urban culture magazine Saigon CityLife, these titles includes writings by Saigon denizens, from viewpoints of both domestic artists and foreigners as well as Vietnamese overseas who came to live and work in this most hectic city of Vietnam. Exposing indepth understanding of its culture, culinary tradition, street life and favourite...

Selected from the favourite articles of the urban culture magazine Saigon CityLife, these titles includes writings by Saigon denizens, from viewpoints of both domestic artists and foreigners as well as Vietnamese overseas who came to live and work in this most hectic city of Vietnam. Exposing indepth understanding of its culture, culinary tradition, street life and favourite...