Mark Twain for Horse Lovers

Mark Twain’s affection for cats is well-known, and no one would be surprised to hear he also liked dogs. Less well known, however, is his admiration for horses and their kin, donkeys and mules. Clearly fascinated with them, he wrote more about Equine animals than he did about either cats or dogs combined. This book offers a collection of Mark Twain’s funniest and most compelling writings about equine animals. Organized chronologically within categories such as “Uneasy Rider,” “Sorry Steeds,” and “Eccentric Equines,” the textual selections cover his early trips out west, his travels to Europe and Middle East, and his later years. The book also includes horse stories drawn purely from his imagination, including the short novella A Horse’s Tale. Other equine vignettes are drawn from such Twain’s classics as “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” Huckleberry Finn, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.

R. Kent Rasmussen is the holder of a UCLA doctorate in history and a retired reference-book editor. He has long been recognized as a leading world authority on Mark Twain, about whom he has published fourteen books. Those volumes include such now-standard reference works as Mark Twain A toZ; its expanded revision, Critical Companion to Mark Twain; and The Quotable Mark Twain. Books that he has edited include four volumes of critical essays; several collections of Mark Twain’s own writings, including the Penguin Classics edition of Autobiographical Writings, Mark Twain for Dog Lovers, and Mark Twain’s Tales of the Macabre & Mysterious—the latter two both Lyons Press publication. He lives in Thousand Oaks, California and is now working on his sixteenth Mark Twain book.