Contents

Note

Alice Addertongue (1732)

Benjamin Franklin

Rip Van Winkle: A Posthumous Tale of Diedrich Knickerbocker (1819-1820)

Washington Irving

Selecting the Faculty (1855)

Robert Carlton (Baynard Rush Hall)

“The Jumping Frog”: In English. Then in French. Then Clawed Back into a Civilized Language Once More, by Patient, Unremunerated Toil (1865 & 1879)

Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

Bill Nations (1873)

Bill Arp (Charles Henry Smith)

A Jersey Centenarian (1875)

Bret Harte

How I Killed a Bear (1878)

Charles Dudley Warner

The Parson’s Horse Race (1878)

Harriet Beecher Stowe

The Peterkins Decide to Learn the Languages (1878)

Lucretia P. Hale

Uncle Remus and the Wonderful Tar-Baby Story (1881)

Joel Chandler Harris

His Pa Gets Mad! (1883)

George W. Peck

John Adams’ Diary (1887)

Bill Nye

Active Colorado Real Estate (1895)

Hayden Carruth

The Idiot’s Journalism Scheme (1895)

John Kendrick Bangs

Rollo Learning to Read (1897)

Robert J. Burdette

The Wish and the Deed (1903)

Max Adeler (Charles Heber Clark)

Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition (1904)

Josiah Allen’s Wife (Marietta Holley)

The Crimson Cord (1904)

Ellis Parker Butler

The Life Elixir of Marthy (1905)

Elizabeth Hyer Neff

The Tale of the Tangled Telegram (1905)

Wilbur D. Nesbit

The Set of Poe (1906)

George Ade

Our Very Wishes (1909)

Harriet Prescott Spofford

The Ransom of Red Chief (1910)

O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)

The Golden Honeymoon (1922)

Ring Lardner

A Telephone Call (1928)

Dorothy Parker

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1939)

James Thurber

Wooing the Muse (1950)

Langston Hughes

The Conversion of the Jews (1958)

Philip Roth

Harrison Bergeron (1961)

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

The Gift (1979)

Kia Penso

Flight Control (1981)

Jervey Tervalon

How to Fight with Your Wife (1996)

Howard Kaplan

Center of the Universe (2012)

Simon Rich