On this day in history in 1862, Samuel Clemens began working as a reporter for a newspaper in Virginia City, Nevada. This is notable for two reasons: It allowed him to hone his writing skills, and it’s also where he began using his pen name, Mark Twain.

The University of Nebraska Press is the publisher of two books by Mark Twain: How Nancy Jackson Married Kate Wilson and Other Tales of Rebellious Girls and Daring Young Women, and Tales of Wonder.

Neither of these are exactly typical Twain books: How Nancy Jackson Married Kate Wilson and Other Tales of Rebellious Girls and Daring Young Women paints a fictional world where rather than polishing their domestic arts and waiting for marriage proposals, girls are fighting battles, riding stallions, rescuing boys from rivers, cross-dressing, debating religion, hunting, squaring off against angry bulls, or, in what may be the most flagrant flouting of Victorian convention, marrying other women.  Tales of Wonder is a collection of early science fiction, in which, Twain embarks on an epic journey into a drop of water, catches a glimpse of an invisible man, reveals a generation-starship-type world in the heart of a drifting iceberg, and imagines futuristic devices of instantaneous communication such as the "phrenophone" and "telelectroscope." Both are groundbreaking, and both contain plenty of Twain’s characteristic wit.