I am new to this list, and although I checked recent archives, I apologize
in advance if this is a subject that has been discussed here in the past.
I am also rather knew to Twain, a graduate student returning to school
after many years, with very little English background (I was trained in
science and business).

So with those caveats, I would like to raise an issue about _The Mysterious
Stranger_.  I have been researching the validity of the published version
of this work and have found, of course that we have preserved something
that Twain never intended the public to see.  The commonly available text
is something of a fraud, a severely edited version of a piece Twain began
and discarded, combined with an editor's bridge paragraph, and a closing
chapter lifted from yet another unpublished (and unfinished) work.  The
preserved text even includes a wizard character from another version of the
story who was awarded a number of negative character traits and grafted
into the published text as a way to deflect Christian uproar over the
dishonesty and lechery attributed by Twain to one of the priests.

Should, then,  _The Mysterious Stranger_ be taught in college classes as a
text by Mark Twain?  And can we make valid inferences about his mental
state or his writing abilities in his final years from such a bastardized
text?

Jim Steele