Mark Twain's "Skeleton Novelette"
An introduction to Mark Twain's "A Murder, a Mystery, and a Marriage"—a work written for these pages 125 years ago and published here for the first time
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Roy Blount Jr. wears many hats: he is a humorist, sportswriter, poet,
performer, lecturer, dramatist, and the author of twelve books. Raised in
Decatur, Georgia, Blount received a bachelor's degree from Vanderbilt and a
master's degree from Harvard. After a brief stint in the Army he worked as a
reporter, columnist, and part-time English instructor in Atlanta before
becoming a writer and editor for Sports Illustrated in 1968. In 1975 he
left Sports Illustrated and, after publishing three articles in The
Atlantic Monthly in 1981, became a contributing editor to the magazine the
following year. In his writing for The Atlantic, Blount has reported
on everything from the civil-rights movement to the Ku Klux Klan, from
Saturday Night Live to Elvis's funeral. Blount has also worked on the
stage; his one-man show at the American Palace Theatre—later expanded into
Roy Blount's Happy Hour and a Half—was described by The New
Yorker as "the most humorous and engaging fifty minutes in town."
An introduction to Mark Twain's "A Murder, a Mystery, and a Marriage"—a work written for these pages 125 years ago and published here for the first time
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