The Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts

“Six years after Mark Twain’s death, Albert Bigelow Paine, the author’s literary executor, brought out a bowdlerized edition of The Mysterious Stranger, patched together from three unfinished manuscripts.” Gibson’s edition, first published in 1969 and now back in print, presented the manuscripts for the fist time exactly as Mark Twain wrote them. Here the reader is offered a glimpse of Mark Twain’s sustained creative process, in what many critics consider the finest fiction of his later years. Begun in 1897 and revised first in 1902 and then 1908, the third version was the only manuscript titled The Mysterious Stranger. These texts offer a rare opportunity to observe Mark Twain’s sustained literary struggle with a central theme.