The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson, with eBook Lib/E

Two half brothers look so similar as infants that no one can tell them apart. One, the legitimate son of a rich man, is destined for a life of comfort, while the other is condemned to be a slave because he is part black. The mother of the would-be slave is also the nurse of the other; to give her son the best life possible, she switches the babies. Soon the boy who is given every advantage becomes spoiled and cruel. He takes sadistic pleasure in tormenting his half brother. As they grow older, the townspeople no longer notice that the boys look similar, and they readily accept that each is born to his station. A local lawyer, David Wilson, has had a similar experience. On his first day in the village, he made an odd remark about a dog, and the townspeople gave him the condescending name "Pudd'nhead." Although he was a young, intelligent lawyer, he is unable to live down this name, so he toils in obscurity for over twenty years. Finally, he is presented with a complex murder trial--a chance to prove himself to the townspeople and shake this unjust label.

About the Author :
Mark Twain, pseudonym of Samuel L. Clemens (1835-1910), was born in Florida, Missouri, and grew up in Hannibal on the west bank of the Mississippi River. He attended school briefly and then at age thirteen became a full-time apprentice to a local printer. When his older brother Orion established the Hannibal Journal, Samuel became a compositor for that paper and then, for a time, an itinerant printer. With a commission to write comic travel letters, he traveled down the Mississippi. Smitten with the riverboat life, he signed on as an apprentice to a steamboat pilot. After 1859, he became a licensed pilot, but two years later the Civil War put an end to the steam-boat traffic. In 1861, he and his brother traveled to the Nevada Territory where Samuel became a writer for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, and there, on February 3, 1863, he signed a humorous account with the pseudonym Mark Twain. The name was a river man's term for water "two fathoms deep" and thus just barely safe for navigation. In 1870 Twain married and moved with his wife to Hartford, Connecticut. He became a highly successful lecturer in the United States and England, and he continued to write. Michael Prichard has recorded more than 500 full-length audiobooks. He received an Audie Award for Tears in the Darkness by Michael Norman and Elizabeth M. Norman and was named a Top Ten Golden Voice by SmartMoney magazine. He has also received several AudioFile Earphones Awards for works including At All Costs by Sam Moses and In Nixon's Web by L. Patrick Gray III. His has narrated works by Mark Twain, John Cheever, and John Updike, and read Fritjof Capra's book The Web of Life for Macmillan Audio. In addition to his audiobook work, Prichard is an actor on screen and stage, including as a member of Ray Bradbury's Pandemonium Theatre Company. He performed the role of Captain Beatty in Fahrenheit 451, a performance for which Bradbury dubbed him "the finest Beatty in history." Prichard holds an M.F.A. in theater from the University of Southern California.