Mark Twain fans will be interested to hear that a never-before-seen Twain story, “The Undertaker’s Tale," long buried within an enormous body of unpublished stories, letters, and essays, appeared this week in the pages of mystery magazine The Strand.
Part of a forthcoming collection of previously unpublished stories and essays, Who Is Mark Twain? (HarperStudio), the story features Twain's characteristic razor sharp wit in a tongue-in-cheek tale about the funeral industry. Says The Strand editor Andrew Gulli, "After rereading several of Twain’s tales and essays, it became even clearer to me that Twain’s writings can never be dated. He tackles the same problems we're challenged with today, and pokes fun at the same characters that inhabit our present-day world."
While the latest issue of The Strand is available now, we have another month to wait for Who Is Mark Twain? Fortunately for Twain fans, some of his papers can already be found at The Mark Twain Project.