The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County

The Celebrated Jumping Frog Of Calaveras County

"The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" is an 1865 short story by Mark Twain, his first great success as a writer, bringing him national attention. The story has also been published as "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog" (its original title) and "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County". 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. Twain describes him: "If he even seen a straddle bug start to go anywheres, he is bet you how long it would take him to get to—to wherever he going to, and if you took him up, he would foller that straddle bug to Mexico but what he would find out where he was bound for and how long he was on the road."

"The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" is also the title story of an 1867 collection of short stories by Mark Twain. Twain's first book, it collected 27 stories that were previously published in magazines and newspapers.

Read more about The Celebrated Jumping Frog Of Calaveras County:  Publication History, Plot, Translations, Adaptations, The Short-story Collection

Famous quotes containing the words celebrated, jumping, frog and/or county:

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    Margaret Mead (1901–1978)

    Everything seems beautiful because you don’t understand. Those flying fish, they’re not leaping for joy, they’re jumping in terror. Bigger fish want to eat them. That luminous water, it takes its gleam from millions of tiny dead bodies, the glitter of putrescence. There’s no beauty here, only death and decay.
    Curtis Siodmak (1902–1988)

    What a wonderful bird the frog are—
    When he stand he sit almost;
    When he hop, he fly almost.
    He ain’t got no sense hardly;
    He ain’t got no tail hardly either.
    When he sit, he sit on what he ain’t got almost.
    —Unknown. The Frog (l. 1–6)

    In the County Tyrone, in the town of Dungannon,
    —Unknown. The Old Orange Flute (l. 1)