Unseen Mark Twain fairytale to be published

A 16-page note about a fairytale told to Mark Twain’s daughters is to be published this year, on the 150th anniversary of the Huckleberry Finn author’s first book.

The Purloining of Prince Oleomargarine is based on handwritten notes by Twain of a story told to his young daughters one night in Paris in 1879. In the story, a young boy who can talk to animals recruits some creatures to help him save a kidnapped prince.

The long-lost story has been completed and illustrated by author and illustrator team Philip and Erin Stead. Publisher Doubleday said the tale explores themes of charity, kindness and bravery in the face of tyranny, with sharply drawn satire and touching pathos.

A scholar spotted the story in 2011 among archive materials when he visited the Mark Twain Papers and Project at the University of California at Berkeley.

Although Twain told his young daughters countless bedtime stories, made up on the spot as they requested them, it is believed that this was the only time he recorded one.

Frances Gilbert, associate publishing director at Random House Books for young readers, who edited the book, said: “To publish a new Twain story is an incredible literary event. When I first got the chance to read this unpublished story, I couldn’t believe what I was holding.”

The book will be published on 26 September, which coincides with the 150th anniversary of the publication of his first book: the 1867 short-story collection The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and Other Sketches.

Philip and Eric Stead have already completed the manuscript, which the publisher said would be framed as “told to me by my friend, Mark Twain”. The award-winning duo are among the best-known names in US children’s writing, behind books like A Sick Day for Amos McGee.

Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in 1835. Most famous for The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, his ability to combine humour, social realism and commentary about the vanity of mankind earned him his reputation as the greatest American novelist and humourist of his age.

In more recent years, his work has garnered controversy because of racist language. According to the American Libraries Association, Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, alongside Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, regularly top the list of books that parents want banned from US school curricula.

In December 2016, Huckleberry Finn was removed from classrooms in Virginia after a complaint by a parent. The parent complained that the frequent use of the N-word in the book was problematic for her biracial son.

The anti-censorship lobby group the National Coalition Against Censorship responded to the move in a post on its Kids’ Right To Read website, writing: “By avoiding discussion of controversial issues such as racism, schools do a great disservice to their students.” The books were later reinstated in classrooms across the state.