A Horse's Tale
224A Horse's Tale
224Hardcover(Special Edition)
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Overview
At the turn of the twentieth century Minnie Maddern Fiske, a New York actress, socialite, and animal rights activist, wrote to Mark Twain with an unusual request: for Twain to write about the evils of bullfighting equal to that of his anti-vivisectionist story A Dog’s Tale. Twain responded with A Horse’s Tale, a comic animal tale that doubled as a frontier adventure and political diatribe.A Horse’s Tale concerns Soldier Boy, Buffalo Bill Cody’s favorite horse, as the protagonist and sometime narrator at a fictional frontier outpost with the U.S. Seventh Cavalry. When the general’s orphaned niece arrives, Buffalo Bill takes her under his wing and ultimately lends her Soldier Boy so that they may seek adventure together. Twain uses the friendship between the girl and the horse as the basis for his eventual indictment of the barbarism of Spanish bullfighting. Twain’s novella is unusual for its complex tone—combining a comic children’s story and a dark portrait of animal cruelty. Including the themes of transatlantic relations and frontier culture, Twain offers a fresh look into the world of Buffalo Bill Cody from the perspective of one of America’s most beloved authors. First published in 1906 in Harper’s Monthly and as a single volume the following year, A Horse’s Tale never again appeared in print except in anthologies of Twain’s work. This edition includes the full text of Twain’s original story, an introduction that situates the work in historical and biographical context, thorough annotations, and the addition of significant archival material related to Twain, Cody, and Fiske.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781496223678 |
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Publisher: | UNP - Bison Books |
Publication date: | 12/01/2020 |
Series: | The Papers of William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody |
Edition description: | Special Edition |
Pages: | 224 |
Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d) |
About the Author
Date of Birth:
November 30, 1835Date of Death:
April 21, 1910Place of Birth:
Florida, MissouriPlace of Death:
Redding, ConnecticutTable of Contents
List of Illustrations Series Editors’ Preface A Note on the Language Acknowledgments Editor’s Introduction by Charles C. Bradshaw A Note on the TextA Horse’s Tale Afterword by Shelley Fisher Fishkin Appendix 1: Mark Twain and Animal Welfare Appendix 2: Childhood and the Clemens Family Appendix 3: The American Frontier Goes Global Notes Selected Bibliography Index