YourEnglishClassDotCom

“The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” was first published in 1865 and in many ways put Mark Twain on the literary map. Twain in fact owed his earliest national audience and critical success to his skillful retelling of this story as part of his onstage performances as a lecturer. It has been published under several titles: “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog,” and “The Jumping Frog.” In it, the narrator retells a story he heard from a bartender, Simon Wheeler, at the Angels Hotel in Angels Camp, California, about the gambler Jim Smiley, a degenerate gambler who’d wager on anything.

A humourous tale stemming from this story is the one about the French translation. Upon discovering a French translation of this story, Twain re-translated the story, verbatum and with the French grammar and syntax intact, back into English. He then published all three versions under the title The Jumping Frog [pdf file].

Listen to the audio book:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.