About the Author
Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in 1835 in Florida, Missouri. He spent much of his childhood in Hannibal, Missouri, a town located on […]
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
Setting
“The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” takes place in the mid- to late 19th century, shortly after the California Gold Rush of 1849. Mark […]
Themes and Characters
A cultured easterner relates his recent visit to a talkative old man at a western mining camp. Rather than providing the information that the easterner […]
Literary Qualities
The frame tale structure of “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” is one of its most important literary devices. In a frame tale, one […]
Social Sensitivity
“The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” was first published in 1865, when Mark Twain was living in the American Southwest, which was still being […]
Topics for Discussion
1. Some of the satiric effects and humor in the story are derived from a clash between the eastern and western cultures in the United […]
Ideas for Reports and Papers
1. Twain’s story was first written as a letter, a style referred to as epistolary. Other examples of epistolary works are Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) […]
Related Titles and Adaptations
The Best Man Wins, directed by John Sturges, was distributed by Columbia in 1948. This film version of “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” […]