Schoolhouse Hill

The Mysterious Stranger

Frontispiece of 1st edition "Eseldorf was a paradise for us boys"
Author	Mark Twain
Illustrator	N. C. Wyeth
Country	United States
Language	English
Publisher	Harper & Brothers
Publication date	1916,posthumously
Media type	Print
Pages	176 pp

The Mysterious Stranger is the novel attempted by the American author Mark Twain. He worked on it intermittently from 1897 through 1908. Twain wrote multiple versions of the story; each involves a supernatural character called "Satan" or "No. 44". All the versions remained unfinished (with the debatable exception of the last one, No. 44, the Mysterious Stranger).

As for the lengths of the three stories, The Chronicle of Young Satan has about 55,000 words, Schoolhouse Hill 15,300 words and No. 44, the Mysterious Stranger 65,000 words.

Twain wrote the "St. Petersburg Fragment" in September 1897. It was set in the fictional town of St. Petersburg, a name Twain often used for Hannibal, Missouri. Twain then revised this version, removing references to St. Petersburg, and used the text for The Chronicle of Young Satan.

The first substantial version is entitled The Chronicle of Young Satan (also referred to as "Eseldorf" version) and relates the adventures of Satan, the sinless nephew of the biblical Satan, in Eseldorf, an Austrian village in the year 1702. Twain wrote this version between November 1897 and September 1900. "Eseldorf" is German for "assville" or "donkeytown".

The second substantial text Twain attempted to write is known as Schoolhouse Hill (or "Hannibal") version. It is set in the US and involves the familiar characters Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer and their adventures with Satan, referred to in this version as "No. 44, New Series 864962". Twain began writing it in November 1898 and, like the "St. Petersburg Fragment", set it in the fictional town of St. Petersburg.

The third text, called No. 44, the Mysterious Stranger: Being an Ancient Tale Found in a Jug and Freely Translated from the Jug, also known as the "Print Shop" version, returns to Austria, this time in the year 1490 (not long after the invention of printing). It tells of No. 44's mysterious appearance at the door of a print shop and his use of heavenly powers to expose the futility of mankind's existence. This version also introduces an idea Twain was toying with at the end of his life involving a duality of the "self", composed of the "Waking Self" and the "Dream Self". Twain explores these ideas through the use of "Duplicates", copies of the print shop workers made by No. 44. This version contains an actual ending; however, the text still has many flaws and it is debatable whether it can be considered finished. Twain wrote this version between 1902 and 1908.