Mark Twain, Orion Clemens, and the Mysterious Stranger

Abstract

In publication collectively 1897, Mark but as The Twain, were Mysterious for at the the author's Stranger age of sixty-one, personal Manuscripts. edification, began These writing and works what in were them are not he today intended explored known for (I collectively as The Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts. These works were not intended for publication but were for the a hor's personal edification, and in them he explored (I believe) his conflicted relationship with his older brother. Twain began working on them two months before Orion died in December that year, and he continued off and on until two years before his own death in 1910, so they engaged him during more than a decade. No doubt his full lifelong dealings with his brother were on his mind, but he seemed to focus on certain incidents from his childhood and early youth-occasions when the two brothers, separated by ten years in age, might conceivably have bridged that gap and formed some sort of normal relationship. The adult Mark Twain used his imagination to relive those wrenching experiences, repeatedly changing the characters' names, the settings, the plots, and-most significantly-the points of view, but always trying to put his finger on what went