'Let us endeavour so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.'
First published in 1894, Pudd'nhead Wilson is a darkly comic novel that powerfully explores race, identity and justice.
Set in a small town in the Antebellum South, Pudd'nhead Wilson follows the resilient and resourceful Roxy, a young woman born into slavery. Determined that her baby son, Chambers, has a better life, Roxy secretly switches him for the infant son of her master, Tom. The two boys' lives, although intertwined, grow in drastically different ways: Chambers is raised in an aristocratic white society, while Tom is enslaved to his own family. It is only when David 'Pudd'nhead' Wilson, a lawyer ridiculed by the locals, comes onto the scene that the truth begins to slowly surface… Including pointed satire on small town politics, religious faith and societal hypocrisy, Pudd'nhead Wilson remains a profound critique of slavery and racism, wrapped in wit, bitter irony and moral bite.
Mark Twain (1835 – 1910), the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, was an American writer and essayist. Famed for his wit and satire, he quickly became a sought-after writer and speaker, and was labelled the 'greatest humorist the United States has produced' by the New York Times. Today, he is considered as the father of modern American literature.
