Advice for Good Little Girls
"Advice for Good Little Girls" is a humorous essay by Mark Twain, first published in 1865, which lists satirical pieces of advice for how young girls should behave. The Routledge Encyclopedia of Mark Twain called it an early precursor to Twain's satirical youth novels Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.[1]
Background
"Advice for Good Little Girls" first appeared in the California Youth's Companion in 1865, as a companion piece to a similar but longer essay, "Advice for Good Little Boys." The essay was reprinted in The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches (1867),[2] and was later included in Twain's The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories (1906), under the title "Advice to Little Girls".
As a satirical retort to the didactic child-rearing literature common at the time, Twain lists subversive, facetious pieces of advice for girls, often encouraging mischievous behavior.[1] These include "You ought never to 'sass' old people unless they 'sass' you first" and "You ought never to take your little brother's 'chewing-gum' away from him by main force; it is better to rope him in with the promise of the first two dollars and a half you find floating down the river on a grindstone."
The essay was republished as a picture book by Enchanted Lion Press in 2013, under the title "Advice to Little Girls", with illustrations by Vladimir Radunsky. The re-release was praised by outlets including NPR[3] and the Los Angeles Times, which called it "as essential today as it was a century-and-a-half ago."[4]
References
- ^ a b LeMaster, J. R.; Wilson, James D., eds. (6 December 2012). The Routledge Encyclopedia of Mark Twain. Taylor & Francis. pp. 15–16. ISBN 9781135881351. Retrieved 27 March 2023.
- ^ Branch, Edgar Marquess; Smith, Harriet E.; Hirst, Robert, eds. (27 July 1981). Early Tales & Sketches, Vol. 2. University of California Press. ISBN 9780520906778.
- ^ Hersher, Becky. "NPR's Book Concierge: Our Guide To 2013's Great Reads". NPR. Retrieved 27 March 2023.
- ^ Lulin, David L. (11 March 2013). "Mark Twain's 'Advice to Little Girls'". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 27 March 2023.
External links
- Advice to Little Girls on Wikimedia Commons
- "Advice to Little Girls" included in The 30,000 Dollar Bequest and Other Stories at Project Gutenberg
Advice to Little Girls public domain audiobook at LibriVox
- v
- t
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- The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
- The Prince and the Pauper
- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
- The American Claimant
- Tom Sawyer Abroad
- Pudd'nhead Wilson
- Tom Sawyer, Detective
- Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc
- A Double Barrelled Detective Story
- A Horse's Tale
- The Mysterious Stranger
- Hellfire Hotchkiss
- "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County"
- "Cannibalism in the Cars"
- "A Literary Nightmare"
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- "The Great Revolution in Pitcairn"
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- "A Double Barrelled Detective Story"
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- "Extracts from Adam's Diary"
- "The War Prayer"
- "Eve's Diary"
- "Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven"
- "My Platonic Sweetheart"
- "Advice for Good Little Girls"
- Mark Twain's (Burlesque) Autobiography and First Romance
- Sketches New and Old
- Mark Twain's Library of Humor
- Merry Tales
- The £1,000,000 Bank Note and Other New Stories
- The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories
- "The Awful German Language"
- "On the Decay of the Art of Lying"
- "Advice to Youth"
- How to Tell a Story and Other Essays
- "Concerning the Jews"
- "To the Person Sitting in Darkness"
- "Edmund Burke on Croker and Tammany"
- "What Is Man?"
- "The United States of Lyncherdom"
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- Is Shakespeare Dead?
- Autobiography of Mark Twain (Chapters from My Autobiography)
- King Leopold's Soliloquy
- The Private History of a Campaign That Failed
- Christian Science
- "Some Thoughts on the Science of Onanism"
- "Votes for Women"
and events
- Mark Twain Prize for American Humor
- Mark Twain Tonight!
- The Adventures of Mark Twain (1944)
- The Adventures of Mark Twain (1985)
- Mark Twain (2001 documentary)
- Twain and Shaw Do Lunch (2011 play)
- Mark Twain: The Musical
- Olivia Langdon Clemens (wife)
- Susy Clemens (daughter)
- Clara Clemens (daughter)
- Jean Clemens (daughter)
- John M. Clemens (father)
- Jane Lampton Clemens (mother)
- Orion Clemens (brother)