Have you ever read Mark Twain's "The Mysterious Stranger"? Well, if you have, you probably read a version that was not the completed version that Twain had intended. You most likely read the version that Albert Paine and Frederick A. Duneka put together after Twain's death. Harper & Brothers publishing company published it in 1916, six years after Twain died. The version, published again in 1923 with the all-important "dream ending," has been scrutinized about many of its inconsistencies.

Twain wrote different sections and versions of the tale over an eleven-year period beginning in 1897 and ending with "The Print Shop" in 1908. Twain's manuscript in the Mark Twain Papers, located at the University of California in Berkeley, is the only true evidence on the matter. Critics have studied Twain's original papers of the story, which can be divided into three separate versions, and have concluded that the published version was not the final intention of Twain.

A timeline of his writings of "The Mysterious Stranger" is as follows:

What I have done is read different literature on the matter, considered all viewpoints, and reported and organized them on this site. It is now up to you, the intelligent non-partial reader, to decide if "The Mysterious Stranger" is or is not the true voice of Mark Twain.