"The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" is an 1865 short story
by Mark Twain. It was his first great success as a writer and brought him
national attention. The story has also been published as "Jim Smiley and His
Jumping Frog" 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. The narrator
describes him: "If he even seen a straddle bug start to go anywheres, he
would bet you how long it would take him to get 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, and Other Sketches is also the
title story of an 1867 collection of short stories by Mark Twain. It was
Twain's first book and collected 27 stories that were previously published
in magazines and newspapers. Publication history
Twain first wrote the title short story at the request of his friend Artemus
Ward, for inclusion in an upcoming book. Twain worked on two versions, but
neither was satisfactory to him—neither got around to describing the jumping
frog contest. Ward pressed him again, but by the time Twain devised a version
he was willing to submit, that book was already nearing publication, so Ward
sent it instead to The New York Saturday Press, where it appeared in the November
18, 1865 edition as "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog". Twain's colorful story
was immensely popular, and was soon printed in many different magazines and
newspapers. Twain developed the idea further, and Bret Harte published this
version in The Californian on December 16, 1865; this time titled "The
Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", and Smiley's name was changed
to Greeley. Further popularity of the tale led Twain
to use the story to anchor his own first book, which appeared in 1867 with a
first issue run of only 1,000 copies. The first edition was issued in seven
colors: blue, brown, green, lavender, plum, red, and terra-cotta, and is
sought after by book collectors, as it fetches thousands of dollars at
auctions. In the book version, Twain changed Greeley back to Smiley.
Plot The narrator is sent by a friend to
interview an old man, Simon Wheeler, who might know the location of an old
acquaintance named Leonidas W. Smiley. Finding Simon at an old mining camp, the
narrator asks him if he knows anything about Leonidas; Simon does not, but
instead tells a story about Jim Smiley, a man who had visited the camp years
earlier. Jim loves to gamble and will offer to
bet on anything and everything, from horse races to dogfights to the health
of the local parson's wife. He catches a frog, names it Dan'l Webster, and spends
three months training it to jump. When a stranger visits the camp, Jim shows off
Dan'l and offers to bet $40 that it can out-jump any other frog in Calaveras
County. The stranger, unimpressed, says that he would take the bet if he had a
frog, and Jim goes out to catch one, leaving him alone with Dan'l. During
this time, the stranger pours lead shot down Dan'l's throat. Once Jim returns,
he and the stranger set the frogs down and let them loose. The stranger's frog
jumps away while Dan'l does not budge, and the surprised and disgusted Jim pays
the $40 wager. After the stranger has departed, Jim turns Dan'l upside down
and it begins to cough up the lead shot. Realizing that he has been cheated, Jim
chases after the stranger but never catches him.
At this point in the story, Simon excuses himself to go outside for a
moment. The narrator realizes that Jim has no connection to Leonidas and gets
up to leave, but Simon stops him at the door and offers to tell about a one-eyed
cow Jim had owned. Rather than stay to hear another pointless story, the
narrator excuses himself and leaves. Translations
Upon discovering a French translation of this story, Twain back-translated the
story into English, word for word, retaining the French grammatical
structure and syntax. He then published all three versions under the title "The
Jumping Frog: in English, then in French, and then Clawed Back into a
Civilized Language Once More by Patient, Unremunerated Toil".
In "Private History of the ‘Jumping Frog’ Story", Twain recounts some
background to the tale—in particular, his surprise to find that the story bore
a striking resemblance to an ancient Greek tale. He wrote:
Now, then, the interesting question is, did the frog episode happen in Angel’s
Camp in the spring of ‘49, as told in my hearing that day in the fall of 1865? I
am perfectly sure that it did. I am also sure that its duplicate happened in
Boeotia a couple of thousand years ago. I think it must be a case of history
actually repeating itself, and not a case of a good story floating down the
ages and surviving because too good to be allowed to perish.
Later, however, in November 1903, Twain noted:
When I became convinced that the "Jumping Frog" was a Greek story two or
three thousand years old, I was sincerely happy, for apparently here was
a most striking and satisfactory justification of a favorite theory of
mine—to wit, that no occurrence is sole and solitary, but is merely a repetition
of a thing which has happened before, and perhaps often.... By-and-by, in
England, after a few years, I learned that there hadn't been any Greek frog in
the business, and no Greek story about his adventures. Professor Sidgwick [in
his textbook for students learning to translate English texts into Greek,
Greek Prose Composition, p. 116] had not claimed that it was a Greek tale; he had
merely synopsized the Calaveras tale and transferred the incident to classic
Greece; but as he did not state that it was the same old frog, the English
papers reproved him for the omission. He told me this in England in 1899 or 1900,
and was much troubled about that censure, for his act had been innocent,
he believing that the story's origin was so well known as to render formal
mention of it unnecessary. But in his "Note To The Thirteenth
Edition", among "hearty .. thanks for the help received", Prof. Sidgwick still
failed to acknowledge his use of the Twain tale.
Adaptations Lukas Foss composed The Jumping Frog of
Calaveras County, an opera in two scenes with libretto by Jean Karsavina, based
on Twain's story. The opera premiered on May 18, 1950, at Indiana University.
The story was also adapted as a scene in the film The Adventures of Mark Twain,
in which Mark Twain retells the story in short to Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, and
Becky Thatcher. Short story collection
The short story collection The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras
County, and Other Sketches, Twain's first book, contains 27 short stories
and sketches. It was released by the American News Company in 1867 under the
editorship of Twain's friend Charles Henry Webb. Privately, to his colleague
Bret Harte, Twain wrote it was "full of damnable errors of grammar and deadly
inconsistencies of spelling in the Frog sketch because I did not read the
proofs". After its May release, the book suffered from lackluster sales. The
collection included: "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of
Calaveras County" "Aurelia's Unfortunate Young Man"
"A Complaint about Correspondents, Dated in San Francisco"
"Answers to Correspondents" "Among the Fenians"
"The Story of the Bad Little Boy Who Didn't Come to Grief"
"Curing a Cold" "An Inquiry about Insurances"
"Literature in the Dry Diggings" "'After' Jenkins"
"Lucretia Smith's Soldier" "The Killing of Julius Caesar
'Localized'" "An Item which the Editor Himself could
not Understand" "Among the Spirits"
"Brief Biographical Sketch of George Washington"
"A Touching Story of George Washington's Boyhood"
"A Page from a Californian Almanac" "Information for the Million"
"The Launch of the Steamer Capital" "Origin of Illustrious Men"
"Advice for Good Little Girls" "Concerning Chambermaids"
"Remarkable Instances of Presence of Mind"
"Honored as a Curiosity in Honolulu" "The Steed 'Oahu'"
"A Strange Dream" "Short and Singular Rations"
See also Frog jumping
Translation References
External links Online text at the Electronic Text
Center at the University of Virginia Library
Books That Grow leveled book version Twain's "Private History of the ‘Jumping
Frog’ Story" Stephen Railton's Mark Twain in His
Times project Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum
Images of First Edition Official Web site for JUMP - a
documentary on the history of Calaveras County's Jumping Frog Jubilee
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County study guide, themes, quotes,
character analysis, teaching guide Book Summary, Leveled Books and Teacher
Guide The Jumping Frog public domain audiobook
at LibriVox 88 Days in the Mother Lode: Mark Twain
Finds His Voice - Documentary film about Twain hearing the story during a stay in
Angels Camp