Hellfire Hotchkiss

Last updated
Hellfire Hotchkiss
Author Mark Twain
CountryUSA
LanguageEnglish
Published1967 (1967) (posthumously)

Hellfire Hotchkiss is an unfinished novel by Mark Twain. Twain completed three chapters of the novel in 1897, mostly while he was residing in Weggis, Switzerland. [1] These remained unpublished until 1967 when they were incorporated into Mark Twain's Satires and Burlesques. [2] As a result the book is not in the public domain.

The novel is notable for the reversed gender roles of its two main characters. [3] [4] The heroine, Rachel "Hellfire" Hotchkiss, is portrayed as a resourceful but temperamental tomboy. Oscar "Thug" Carpenter, in contrast, is portrayed as a sensitive, effeminate, and unstable young man. In one section of the book, a villager remarks, "Pudd'nhead Wilson says Hellfire Hotchkiss is the only genuwyne male man in this town and Thug Carpenter's the only genuwyne female girl, if you leave out sex and just consider the business facts."

According to some sources, the character of Oscar Carpenter was partially based on Twain's brother Orion Clemens, who was notoriously indecisive, [4] [5] while Rachel Hotchkiss may have been based on Twain's friend Lillie Hitchcock. [2] [5]

Related Research Articles

<i>Adventures of Huckleberry Finn</i> 1885 novel by Mark Twain

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel by American author Mark Twain, which was first published in the United Kingdom in December 1884 and in the United States in February 1885.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bret Harte</span> American fiction writer and poet (1836–1902)

Bret Harte was an American short story writer and poet best remembered for short fiction featuring miners, gamblers, and other romantic figures of the California Gold Rush. In a career spanning more than four decades, he also wrote poetry, plays, lectures, book reviews, editorials, and magazine sketches.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark Twain</span> American author and humorist (1835–1910)

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist and essayist. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced," with William Faulkner calling him "the father of American literature." His novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), with the latter often called the "Great American Novel." Twain also wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) and Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894), and co-wrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) with Charles Dudley Warner.

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1885.

You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer'; but that ain't no matter. That book was made by a Mr Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edgar Lee Masters</span> American poet

Edgar Lee Masters was an American attorney, poet, biographer, and dramatist. He is the author of Spoon River Anthology, The New Star Chamber and Other Essays, Songs and Satires, The Great Valley, The Serpent in the Wilderness, An Obscure Tale, The Spleen, Mark Twain: A Portrait, Lincoln: The Man, and Illinois Poems. In all, Masters published twelve plays, twenty-one books of poetry, six novels and six biographies, including those of Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, Vachel Lindsay, and Walt Whitman.

<i>A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court</i> 1889 novel by Mark Twain

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is an 1889 novel by American humorist and writer Mark Twain. The book was originally titled A Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Some early editions are titled A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Henry Sleeman</span> British colonial administrator

Major-general Sir William Henry Sleeman KCB was a British soldier and administrator in British India. He is best known for his work from the 1830s in suppressing the organized criminal gangs known as Thuggee. He also discovered the holotype specimen of the sauropod dinosaur Titanosaurus indicus in Jabalpur in 1828.

<i>Tom Sawyer, Detective</i> 1896 novel by Mark Twain

Tom Sawyer, Detective is an 1896 novel by Mark Twain. It is a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), and Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894). Tom Sawyer attempts to solve a mysterious murder in this burlesque of the immensely popular detective novels of the time. Like Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the story is told using the first-person narrative voice of Huck Finn.

<i>Puddnhead Wilson</i> 1894 American novel by Mark Twain

Pudd'nhead Wilson is a novel by American writer Mark Twain published in 1894. Its central intrigue revolves around two boys—one, born into slavery, with 1/32 black ancestry; the other, white, born to be the master of the house. The two boys, who look similar, are switched at infancy. Each grows into the other's social role.

<i>The Bostonians</i> 1886 novel by Henry James

The Bostonians is a novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in The Century Magazine in 1885–1886 and then as a book in 1886. This bittersweet tragicomedy centres on an odd triangle of characters: Basil Ransom, a political conservative from Mississippi; Olive Chancellor, Ransom's cousin and a Boston feminist; and Verena Tarrant, a pretty, young protégée of Olive's in the feminist movement. The storyline concerns the struggle between Ransom and Olive for Verena's allegiance and affection, though the novel also includes a wide panorama of political activists, newspaper people, and quirky eccentrics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark Twain in popular culture</span>

Mark Twain's legacy includes awards, events, a variety of memorials and namesakes, and numerous works of art, entertainment, and media.

<i>The Deerslayer</i> 1841 Book by James Fenimore Cooper

The Deerslayer, or The First War-Path (1841) was James Fenimore Cooper's last novel in his Leatherstocking Tales. Its 1740–1745 time period makes it the first installment chronologically and in the lifetime of the hero of the Leatherstocking tales, Natty Bumppo. The novel's setting on Otsego Lake in central, upstate New York, is the same as that of The Pioneers, the first of the Leatherstocking Tales to be published (1823). The Deerslayer is considered to be the prequel to the rest of the series. Fenimore Cooper begins his work by relating the astonishing advance of civilization in New York State, which is the setting of four of his five Leatherstocking Tales.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Heathen Chinee</span> Poem

"The Heathen Chinee", originally published as "Plain Language from Truthful James", is a narrative poem by American writer Bret Harte. It was published for the first time in September 1870 in the Overland Monthly. It was written as a parody of Algernon Charles Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon (1865), and satirized anti-Chinese sentiment in northern California.

John Camden Hotten was an English bibliophile and publisher. He is best known for his clandestine publishing of numerous erotic and pornographic titles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Henry Webb</span> American poet

Charles Henry Webb was an American poet, author and journalist. He was particularly known for his parodies and humorous writings.

The Californian was a San Francisco literary newspaper published weekly from May 28, 1864 until February 1, 1868.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark Twain bibliography</span> About the works of Mark Twain

Samuel Langhorne Clemens ,⁣ well known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. Twain is noted for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), which has been called the "Great American Novel," and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876). He also wrote poetry, short stories, essays, and non-fiction. His big break was "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" (1867).

<i>The Adventures of Tom Sawyer</i> 1876 novel by Mark Twain

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is an 1876 novel by Mark Twain about a boy, Tom Sawyer, growing up along the Mississippi River. It is set in the 1840s in the town of St. Petersburg, which is based on Hannibal, Missouri, where Twain lived as a boy. In the novel, Sawyer has several adventures, often with his friend Huckleberry Finn. Originally a commercial failure, the book ended up being the best-selling of Twain's works during his lifetime. Though overshadowed by its 1884 sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the book is considered by many to be a masterpiece of American literature. It is alleged by Mark Twain to be one of the first novels to be written on a typewriter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jane Lampton Clemens</span> Mother of author Mark Twain

Jane Lampton Clemens was the mother of author Mark Twain. She was the inspiration of the character "Aunt Polly" in Twain's 1876 novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. She was regarded as a "cheerful, affectionate, and strong woman" with a "gift for storytelling" and as the person from whom Mark Twain inherited his sense of humor.

References

  1. Twain, Mark; Franklin R. Rogers (1967). Mark Twain's Satires and Burlesques . Berkeley, California: University of California Press. ISBN   0-520-01081-7.
  2. 1 2 Cooley, John (2001). How Nancy Jackson Married Kate Wilson. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. pp. 43–44. ISBN   0-8032-9442-5.
  3. Morris, Linda A. (September 2005). "The Eloquent Silence in "Hellfire Hotchkiss"". The Mark Twain Annual. 3 (1): 43–51. doi:10.1111/j.1756-2597.2005.tb00028.x.
  4. 1 2 Gillman, Susan (1989). Dark Twins: Imposture and Identity in Mark Twain's America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 109–110. ISBN   0-226-29387-4.
  5. 1 2 LeMaster, J.R. (1993). The Mark Twain Encyclopedia. New York: Garland. p. 355. ISBN   0-8240-7212-X.