The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut

Written by Mark Twain

Narrated by Richard Henzel

In this unabridged recording of one of Mark Twain's lesser-known short stories, the "campaign of crime" referred to was a rash of robberies, arson, racketeering, and murders in Connecticut, where the author was living at that time. Alternatively funny, disturbing, and self-revelatory, an abridged performance of this piece has been part of Richard Henzel's Jefferson Award nominated stage show Mark Twain In Person since 1979, and was later broadcast on public television in a special produced by WTTW-TV in Chicago, winning the Chicago Emmy for Original Adaptation. Narrator Richard Henzel has been performing and interpreting Mark Twain since 1967, and has narrated more than a score of Mark Twain titles for The Mark Twain In Person Audiobook Library.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Big Happy Family
• Release date: Jan 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9781094249698

Mark Twain

Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in Missouri in 1835, the son of a lawyer. Early in his childhood, the family moved to Hannibal, Missouri – a town which would provide the inspiration for St Petersburg in Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. After a period spent as a travelling printer, Clemens became a river pilot on the Mississippi: a time he would look back upon as his happiest. When he turned to writing in his thirties, he adopted the pseudonym Mark Twain ('Mark Twain' is the cry of a Mississippi boatman taking depth measurements, and means 'two fathoms'), and a number of highly successful publications followed, including The Prince and the Pauper (1882), Huckleberry Finn (1884) and A Connecticut Yankee (1889). His later life, however, was marked by personal tragedy and sadness, as well as financial difficulty. In 1894, several businesses in which he had invested failed, and he was declared bankrupt. Over the next fifteen years – during which he managed to regain some measure of financial independence – he saw the deaths of two of his beloved daughters, and his wife. Increasingly bitter and depressed, Twain died in 1910, aged seventy-five.