The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County

Mark Twain’s hilarious story about an inveterate Gold Rush gambler has a humorous history of its own. Originally titled “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog” in an 1865 edition of a New York newspaper, the tale quickly caught the attention of American readers nationwide. It was republished several times, including by well-known Gold Rush writer Bret Harte as “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” and that title became the name of Twain’s first book, an 1867 collection of his humor pieces. In a letter to Harte, Twain regretted numerous errors in the book version of Jumping Frog: He claimed they were due to his failure to read the proofs before publication. He later republished the story elsewhere in slightly modified versions, and he twice changed the name of gambler Jim Smiley. These circumstances have given nightmares to proofreaders, who must differentiate between errors that Twain claimed exist in the 1867 edition and mistakes and changes introduced later by the author himself and by later editors and typesetters. The result is that, today, with the story now in the public domain, no two versions of “The Celebrated Jumping Frog” are exactly the same, including modern re-releases.