Pudd'nhead Wilson (Dover Thrift Editions)
(in full The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson, and the Comedy of Those Extraordinary Twins) Novel by Mark Twain, originally published as Pudd'nhead Wilson, A Tale (1894). A story about miscegenation in the antebellum South, the book is noted for its grim humor and its reflections on racism and responsibility.  Roxana, a light-skinned mixed-race slave, switches her baby with her white owner's baby. Her natural son, Tom Driscoll, grows up in a privileged household to become a criminal who finances his gambling debts by selling her to a slave trader and who later murders his putative uncle. Meanwhile, Roxy raises Valet de Chambre as a slave. David ("Pudd'nhead") Wilson, an eccentric lawyer, determines the true identities of Tom and Valet. As a result Roxy is exposed, Wilson is elected mayor, Tom is sold into slavery, and Valet, unfitted for his newly won freedom, becomes an illiterate, uncouth landholder.  --The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature--This text refers to an alternatePaperbackedition.