A Horse's Tale

At the turn of the twentieth century Minnie Maddern Fiske, a New York actress, socialite, and animal rights activist, wrote to Mark Twain with an unusual request: for Twain to write about the evils of bullfighting equal to that of his anti-vivisectionist story A Dogs Tale. Twain responded with A Horses Tale, a comic animal tale that doubled as a frontier adventure and political diatribe. A Horses Tale concerns Soldier Boy, Buffalo Bill Codys favorite horse, as the protagonist and sometime narrator at a fictional frontier outpost with the U.S. Seventh Cavalry. When the generals orphaned niece arrives, Buffalo Bill takes her under his wing and ultimately lends her Soldier Boy so that they may seek adventure together. Twain uses the friendship between the girl and the horse as the basis for his eventual indictment of the barbarism of Spanish bullfighting. Twains novella is unusual for its complex tonecombining a comic childrens story and a dark portrait of animal cruelty. Including the themes of transatlantic relations and frontier culture, Twain offers a fresh look into the world of Buffalo Bill Cody from the perspective of one of Americas most beloved authors. First published in 1906 in Harpers Monthly and as a single volume the following year, A Horses Tale never again appeared in print except in anthologies of Twains work. This edition includes the full text of Twains original story, an introduction that situates the work in historical and biographical context, thorough annotations, and the addition of significant archival material related to Twain, Cody, and Fiske.