The news that a long lost manuscript, penned by a famous dead author, has been unearthed cannot fail to excite interest and romantic speculation amongst that author's readership.

    The last decade has seen a number of instances in this regard, Jules Verne's Paris in the Twentieth Century, and Louisa May Alcotts' A Modern Mephistopheles, for example, which have rewarded readers' expectations handsomely by virtue of possessing both literary and historical interest.

    No one could question the wisdom of publishing Verne's Paris in the Twentieth Century, rejected 140 years ago as being too bizarre to publish, Verne had in fact brilliantly anticipated fax machines, photocopiers, urban light pollution, populist trends in academia, and a host of other modern realities.    

    The competition never occurred, the story was never published, and the manuscript was widely believed to be lost. When it resurfaced the Twain estate successfully blocked its publication in 1949, but in 2000 the right to publish the manuscript was acquired by the library to which Twain had initially donated it.

    The reader is immediately aware why the Twain estate blocked the manuscript's publication. Even Roy Blount Jr., who wrote a detailed Foreward and Afterward for this first edition, cannot refrain from asking, "what was bugging Mark Twain in 1876 to make him think up the benighted village of Deer Lick?" And again, "The reader may also be wondering why the whole story is marked by ill (in more than one sense) humor."

    Taken by itself A Murder, A Mystery, and a Marriage is a joyless sketch of a squalid rural town whose primary purpose is to serve as a setup for a self righteous and ill considered diatribe against Jules Verne, of all people, who had died shortly before A Murder, A Mystery, and a Marriage was composed. Twain seems to have taken up a loathing for Verne on the grounds that Verne embellished other people's adventures in his book.