The £1,000,000 Bank Note and Other New Stories
The £1,000,000 Bank Note and Other New Stories is a 1893 collection of short stories by American writer Mark Twain.
Background
The collection was published in 1893, in a disastrous decade for the United States, a time marked by doubt and waning optimism, rapid immigration, labour problems, unchecked Social Darwinism, and the rise of political violence and social protest.
It was also a difficult time for Twain personally, as he was forced into bankruptcy and devastated by the death of his favourite daughter, Suzy. Yet the title story still brims with confidence and optimism, marking the moment of hope just before Twain turned to the grim stories of his later years.
Plot summary
"The £1,000,000 Bank-Note" charts the magical rags-to-riches ascent of a virtuous and resourceful mining broker's clerk from San Francisco who arrives in London with a single dollar in his pocket, and proceeds to ultimate and splendid financial success and fame in London society -- a paean to ingenuity and a celebration of its cunning confidence-man narrator. The other pieces range from "Mental Telegraphy," a serious essay reflecting Twain's continuing interest in the occult -- he and his wife would later try several seances, poignantly and unsuccessfully, to contact their daughter Suzy -- to a tongue-in-cheek "Petition to the Queen of England" for relief from taxes.
| Works by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) | |
|---|---|
| Novels: |
General Washington's Negro Body-Servant • My Late Senatorial Secretaryship • The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today • The Adventures of Tom Sawyer • 1601: Conversation, as it was by the Social Fireside, in the Time of the Tudors • The Prince and the Pauper • Adventures of Huckleberry Finn • A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court • The American Claimant • Tom Sawyer Abroad • Pudd'nhead Wilson • Tom Sawyer, Detective • Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc • A Double Barrelled Detective Story • Edmund Burke on Croker and Tammany • A Dog's Tale • The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • A Horse's Tale • The Mysterious Stranger • No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger |
| Short stories: | |
| Short story collections: |
Sketches New and Old • A True Story and the Recent Carnival of Crime • Punch, Brothers, Punch! and other Sketches • Merry Tales • The £1,000,000 Bank Note and Other New Stories • Mark Twain's (Burlesque) Autobiography and First Romance • Letters from the Earth |
| Essays: | |
| Non fiction: |
The Innocents Abroad • Memoranda (monthly column) • Roughing It • Old Times on the Mississippi • A Tramp Abroad • Life on the Mississippi • Following the Equator • What Is Man? • Is Shakespeare Dead? • Queen Victoria's Jubilee • Mark Twain's Autobiography • Mark Twain's Notebook • King Leopold's Soliloquy • The Private History of a Campaign That Failed • Mark Twain's Weapons of Satire: Anti-Imperialist Writings on the Philippine-American War • The Bible According to Mark Twain: Writings on Heaven, Eden, and the Flood |
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