Christian Science
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Christian Science
（The Oxford Mark Twain / Shelley Fisher Fishkin, editor）
Oxford University Press, 1996
- : trade ed
- : lib. ed
Available at / 70 libraries
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Kobe Shoin Women's University Library / Kobe Shoin Women's College Library
: trade edA938.6210715504
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Nihon University College of International Relations Library国際
: trade ed0938.6||Tw 1||2500111903
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Note
Facsimile reprint. Originally published: New York : Harper, 1907
A facsimile reprint of the 1st ed. of Twain's work including the original illustration
Includes bibliographical references
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Christian Science begins, as Garry Wills notes in his introduction, with Twain's description of a man who "falls off a cliff and finds his bones projecting from him like the arms of a hat rack. After a course of treatment from a Christian Science practitioner, he calls in a veterinarian and pays the Christian Scientist with an imaginary check for an imaginary cure." Although Twain recognized that everyone was born with "the power which a man's imagination has over his body to heal it or make it sick," he was deeply suspicious of the empire-building, power-mongering, delusions, and evasions of the founder of the First Church of Christ, Scientist, Mary Baker Eddy. Wills notes that "Christian Science can be read at several levels, all rewarding--first, as a satire on Christian Science's wilder pretensions and its founder's deceptions; then, as an example of Twain's regard for language as the indicator of mental and moral conditions; and finally as part of a biographical descent into the nihilism of his last days. On all these counts the book gets us very close to the heart of American culture."
by "Nielsen BookData"
