The Esquimau maiden's romance : autograph manuscript signed, [1893].

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The Esquimau maiden's romance : autograph manuscript signed, [1893].

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/432086445

Clemens wrote this story in 1893 using his pseudonym, "Mark Twain," as the narrator. Clemens writes of spending a week in a village in the Arctic Circle (a region he never visited) with a 20-year-old Eskimo girl named Lasca. The central narrative is Lasca's account of her tragic romance with a young man named Kalula. Clemens was fascinated by wealth and its consequences. The story satirizes the distorting effects of great wealth on character and behavior, and the inverted notions of wealth that exist between Lasca (and her tribe) and industrialized societies. Clemens concludes the story: "So ended the poor maid's humble little tale -- whereby we learn that since a hundred million dollars in New York and twenty-two fish-hooks on the border of the Arctic Circle represent the same financial supremacy, a man in straightened circumstances is a fool to stay in New York when he can buy ten cents' worth of fish-hooks and emigrate."

1 item (57 p.) ; 20.4 cm.

Pierpont Morgan Library.

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SNAC Resource ID: 7519486

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Twain, Mark, 1835-1910

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6dg7gd6 (person)

Mark Twain (b. Samuel Langhorne Clemens, November 30, 1835, Florida, MO – d. April 21, 1910, Redding, CT) was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. Among his novels are The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885). Twain served an apprenticeship with a printer and then worked as a typesetter, contributing articles to the newspaper of his older brother Orion Clemens. He later became a riverboat pil...