What you can SEARCH here are the works by which MT's achievement was defined in his time. Above is the 25-volume edition of Mark Twain's Writings that was published near the end of his life and advertised to prospective buyers as "Your Mark Twain." Over the next decade, as it was reprinted by different publishers and in different editions, some shorter pieces were moved from one volume to another, but the basic canon of "Mark Twain's Writings" remained constant. It is important to realize that the "Mark Twain" captured by this edition is not exactly the same as our "Mark Twain." Many of the MT works that define his achievement in our times -- "The War Prayer," for example, or "The United States of Lyncherdom" -- were not included, either because Samuel Clemens never allowed "Mark Twain" to publish them, or because -- like the anti-imperialist pieces he did publish during his lifetime -- they were not considered a relevant or significant part of his legacy.
The site's searchable titles are listed at left. The first nineteen comprised the standard 25-volume edition, and are listed in order of their volume numbers. (Note the precedence given to MT's travel writings even at the end of his career.) The three additional books were published between 1909 and 1916, after the edition's contents were codified. MT himself authorized the first two publications; the version of The Mysterious Stranger here is the one his literary executor, Albert Bigelow Paine, brought out six years after MT's death.