The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg, and Other Stories

About the book

The title narrative introduces Hadleyburg as a community certain of its moral distinction. A stranger's carefully arranged offer of money makes its inhabitants confront a test for which their cultivated reputation may have left them unprepared. Twain develops the satire through private rationalizations and the pressure of public recognition, showing how a desire to appear virtuous can compete with the practice of virtue. The volume extends beyond that story into sketches, recollections, social commentary, and pieces concerned with performance, travel, religion, and literary life. Its range makes the title's exposure of self-satisfaction part of a broader habit of questioning accepted accounts. Across the collection, claims to wisdom or respectability become most interesting when a practical circumstance reveals what the person making the claim has failed to consider.

• Reputation and virtue
• Self-deception
• Satire

Why read it

For the title story's sustained moral trap and a varied collection that extends Twain's suspicion of comfortable public claims.

Stories and sketches · English text