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. Fortunately, most of the differences are in spelling and punctuation; the story itself remains more or less intact.

Throughout Twain’s fiction, characters spin tall tales, and the challenge for the story’s main character—and the reader—is to detect the fabrications quickly. “The Celebrated Jumping Frog” features many of the motifs and literary hallmarks that would go on to define Twain’s writing: gambling, American vernacular, tricksters and taletellers, high stakes, and absurdist humor. While Twain’s later works often feature incisive social commentary, this early story in Twain’s career features a lighter, sillier tone.

Twain grounds the humor of his story with factual details that would have been recognized immediately by his contemporary readers. After gold was discovered in central California in 1848, thousands of people migrated to California in search of their fortunes, including Twain. Unsurprisingly, the influx of new wealth created the perfect conditions for gambling and attracted risk-takers. Gold mining itself was an extended bet that miners would find enough gold within their claim to make their efforts worthwhile. Angel’s Camp is a real place in Calaveras County. Its miners extracted gold from the nearby foothills for decades; the takings totaled more than $20 million—equal to nearly a half-billion dollars today. Many modern towns along the Sierra Nevada foothills got their start during the Gold Rush, and Twain’s story reflects the economic and social conditions of their founding. Smiley bets $40 that his frog will win, the equivalent of more than $1,000 today. It is a large bet even for a Gold Rush town, and Twain’s readers could infer that Smiley is a high-stakes gambler in a Wild West town, even if his methods are ridiculous. A common technique in humor writing is to create a surprising interruption to an established pattern. In this story, Twain establishes a pattern of Smiley’s clever and successful betting techniques, then humorously introduces absurd methods by which Smiley is beaten at his own game.

In the story, Smiley has a knack for betting, but he is also an innocent in that he trusts people when he should not. He leaves his frog in the hands of a Stranger while he goes searching for a second frog for the Stranger to bet on. The Stranger promptly cheats by feeding the frog lead shot—the tiny pellets that make up a shotgun shell’s contents. Leaving his frog alone with the Stranger seems wildly incautious, portraying Smiley as too trusting, rather than devious. Just as merchants were more likely to profit by selling wares to miners than the miners were to strike gold, local residents were likely to get the better of innocent outsiders. Twain humorously reverses this dynamic in Smiley’s defeat, while simultaneously recreating it in the Narrator. The Narrator, searching for news of Leonidas Smiley, instead gets an earful of baloney about a fictional Jim Smiley. By the time the Narrator realizes that Simon’s story is a tall tale, it’s too late; Simon has enjoyed his fun. So also, perhaps, has the Narrator’s friend who originally asked the Narrator to seek news of “Leonidas” Smiley. Twain suggests that the inciting incident of the story is as much of a joke as what follows.

Finally, Twain plays a joke his readers by wagering that he can keep readers intrigued with ridiculous gambling stories until they’ve read the tale all the way through. The Narrator warns early on that Wheeler relates his story in a boring monotone, as if there might be something fishy about it. Twain, however, actually delivers a different caveat in this moment, slyly indicating to the reader that the story to follow is silly and will not deliver any kind of revelation of character or dramatic catharsis. In this way, Twain takes the place of Simon, and the reader becomes the Narrator, left to determine for themselves whether the humor of the story is satisfying enough.