No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger

The Mysterious Stranger is the final novel attempted by the American author Mark Twain. He worked on it periodically from 1897-1908. The body of work is a serious social commentary by Twain addressing his ideas of the Moral Sense and the “damned human race.” Twain wrote multiple versions of the story; each is unfinished and involves a supernatural character called “Satan” or “No. 44.” 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.

     The first substantial version is entitled The Chronicle of Young Satan 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-September 1900. “Eseldorf” is German for “assville” or “donkeytown.”

     The second substantial version Twain attempted to write is known as Schoolhouse Hill. It is set in the United States 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.” Schoolhouse Hill is the shortest of the three versions. Twain began writing it in November 1898 and, like the “St. Petersburg Fragment,” set it in the fictional town of St. Petersburg.

     The third version, 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 version is not considered as complete as Twain would have intended. Twain wrote this version between 1902-1908.