22963. (Jonathan Safran Foer) Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
22964. (Philipp W. Stockhammer, et al) Rewriting the Central European Early Bronze Age
. . . . . Chronology: Evidence from Large-Scale Radiocarbon Dating [article]
22965. (Robert M. Kerr) Coït sacré ou deuil rituel? Quelques remarques préliminaires sur
. . . . . l’apthéose chez les Phéniciens [article]
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Category Archives: BG – Reading 2015
READING – DECEMBER 2015
READING – NOVEMBER 2015
22885. Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight, An Alliterative Romance-Poem, 1360 AD [Middle
. . . . . English text] [ed. Richard Morris]
22886. (Arthur B. Reeve) The Invisible Ray [story]
22887. [2] (Alan Moorehead) The Fatal Impact: An Account of the Invasion of the South
. . . . . Pacific 1767–1840
22888. (Poul Anderson) World Without Stars
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READING – OCTOBER 2015
22769. (Bruce M. Knauft) South Coast New Guinea Cultures
(Ed Hall ̶ed.) People & Caribou in the Northwest Territories:
. . . . 22770. (Chuck Arnold) Traditional Use [article]
. . . . 22771. (Ed Hall & Elisabeth Hadlari) Present Use [article]
. . . . 22772. (Jill Oakes) Clothing [article]
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READING – SEPTEMBER 2015
22710. (Marion Zimmer Bradley) The Planet Savers
22711. (Lester del Rey) The Mysterious Planet
22712. (Alan Armstrong) Whittington
22713. (Gloria Hatrick) Masks
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READING – AUGUST 2015
22622. (Catherine Freeman & Deborah Mailman) Going Bush — Adventures Across
. . . . . Indigenous Australia
22623. (Aditya Adhikari & Bhaskar Gautam) Impunity and Political Accountability in Nepal
22624. (Mario Alinei) The Celtic Origin of Lat. rota and Its Implications for the Prehistory of
. . . . . Europe [article]
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Twain’s Mysterious Stranger
Some famous books are obvious masterpieces, most have a mixture of merits and flaws, but a few are just plain weird. In the last category, few would hesitate to place Mark Twain’s Mysterious Stranger. Even attempting to find and read a copy can be a confusing task. Twain’s last novel existed in a number of fragmentary, unfinished versions, written in between 1897 and 1908. None were published in his lifetime. His literary executor, Albert Bigelow Paine, and Frederick Duneka, an editor at Harper & Brothers, cobbled together a version and published it in 1916. This is the version that became known to the public. I have just reread this 1916 version in its original edition, The Mysterious Stranger — A Romance by Mark Twain with Illustrations by N.C.Wyeth [shown at left]. Wyeth’s illustrations add greatly to the pleasure. He was one of the greatest of book illustrators in a period that boasted Kay Nielson, Howard Pyle, Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Edmund Dulac and Arthur Rackham. However, this edition took extraordinary liberties with Twain’s work, a fact which was not made plain until 1963, when John S. Tucker published Mark Twain and Little Satan: The Writing of The Mysterious Stranger. Twain had first attempted the story in 1897, leaving an untitled fragment [now called the St. Petersburg Fragment]. Between 1897 and 1900, Twain produced a more substantial manuscript which he called The Chronicle of Young Satan. In 1898, he produced a short and much very different text which he called Schoolhouse Hill, incorporating elements from the first two. Finally, between 1902 and 1908, Twain produced an almost complete version which he titled No. 44, the Mysterious Stranger: Being an Ancient Tale Found in a Jug and Freely Translated from the Jug. Tucker’s scholarship revealed that Paine and Duneka had relied primarily on the earlier Chronicle of Young Satan, had removed substantial portions, changed names, characters, added bits written by themselves, and pasted the last chapter of Twain’s final version onto the pastiche. None of these extreme alterations was acknowledged, an act of literary vandalism and fraud that went uncorrected until the University of California Press published three of the original manuscripts in 1969. No.44, the Mysterious Stranger, Twain’s final version, did not see popular publication until 1982, and I have finally read this authoritative text. Read more »
READING – JULY 2015
22572. (James Woodford) The Wollemi Pine
22573. (Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine) De l’esclavage en Canada
22574. (Beverley Boissery) A Deep Sense of Wrong — The Treason, Trials, and Trans-portation
. . . . . to New South Wales of Lower Canadian Rebels after the 1838 Rebellion
22575. (Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine) Deux giriouettes, ou l’hypocrisie démasquée
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READING – JUNE 2015
22521. (Stephen L. Dyson & Robert J. Rowland Jr.) Archaeology and History in Sardinia:
. . . . . Shepherds, Sailors, & Conquerors
(Clifford D. Simak) Une Chasse Dangereuse:
. . . . 22522. (Clifford D. Simak) Une chasse dangereuse [= The World That Couldn’t Be]
. . . . 22523. (Clifford D. Simak) Pour sauver la guerre [= The Civilization Game]
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READING – MAY 2015
22416. (Dwayne Brown) Curiosity Rover Finds Active, Ancient Organic Chemistry on Mars
. . . . . [article]
22417. (Ben Krause-Kyora, et al) Use of Domestic Pigs by Mesolithic Hunter-Gatherers in
. . . . . Northwestern Europe [article]
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