The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

About The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Long cherished by readers of all ages, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is both a hilarious account of an incorrigible truant and a powerful parable of innocence in conflict with the fallen adult world.

The mighty Mississippi River of the antebellum South gives the novel both its colorful backdrop and its narrative shape, as the runaways Huck and Jim—a young rebel against civilization allied with an escaped slave—drift down its length on a flimsy raft. Their journey, at times rollickingly funny but always deadly serious in its potential consequences, takes them ever deeper into the slave-holding South, and our appreciation of their shared humanity grows as we watch them travel physically farther from yet morally closer to the freedom they both passionately seek.

About The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Introduction by George Saunders
Commentary by Thomas Perry Sergeant, Bernard DeVoto, Clifton Fadiman, T. S. Eliot, and Leo Marx

“All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn,” Ernest Hemingway wrote. “It’s the best book we’ve had.” A complex masterpiece that spawned controversy right from the start (it was banished from the Concord library shelves in 1885), it is at heart a compelling adventure story. Huck, in flight from his murderous father, and Jim, in flight from slavery, pilot their raft through treacherous waters, surviving a crash with a steamboat and betrayal by rogues. As Norman Mailer has said, “The mark of how good Huckleberry Finn has to be is that one can compare it to a number of our best modern American novels and it stands up page for page.”

About The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

"A GOLD MINE FOR SCHOLARS."

*Deidre Carmody

The New York Times

Now, in this extraordinary literary discovery, the original first half of Mark Twain’s American masterpiece is available for the first time ever to a general readership. Lost for more than a century, the passages reinstated in this edition reveal a novel even more controversial than the version Twain published in 1885, and provide an invaluable insight into his creative process.

The changes that Mark Twain made indicate that he frequently checked his impulse to write an even darker, more confrontational work than the book he finally published. Even in its smallest variations, the original manuscript demonstrates the skill, the restraint, and the constraints that affected Mark Twain’s thinking. This edition, then, not only presents the Huckleberry Finn that has delighted and provoked readers everywhere for more than a century, but also brings forward the original book behind the book.

A breakthrough of unparalleled impact, this comprehensive edition of an American classic is the final rebuttal in the tireless debate of "what Mark Twain really meant."

"[A] masterly restoration . . . I wish this new version of Huckleberry Finn would be distributed to all the nation’s classrooms as the basic text and lead to a badly needed reconsideration of the questions it raises."

*James A. McPherson

Chicago Tribune

"Thoughtfully respects Twain’s intentions."

*Gary Lee Stronum

The Cleveland Plain Dealer

With a foreword and addendum by Victor Doyno

About The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

"A GOLD MINE FOR SCHOLARS."

*Deidre Carmody

The New York Times

Now, in this extraordinary literary uncovering, the original first half of Mark Twain’s American masterpiece is available for the first time ever to a general readership. Lost for more than a century, the passages reinstated in this edition reveal a novel even more controversial than the version Twain published in 1885 and provide an invaluable insight into his creative process. A breakthrough of unparalleled impact, this comprehensive edition of an American classic is the final rebuttal in the tireless debate of "what Twain really meant."

"[A] MASTERLY RESTORATION . . . I wish this new version of Huckleberry Finn would be distributed to all the nation’s classrooms as the basic text and lead to a badly needed reconsideration of the questions it raises."

*James A. McPherson

Chicago Tribune

"THOUGHTFULLY RESPECTS TWAIN’S INTENTIONS."

*Gary Lee Stonum

The Cleveland Plain Dealer

With a Foreword and Addendum by Victor Doyno

About The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Hilariously picaresque, epic in scope, alive with the poetry and vigor of the American people, Mark Twain’s story about a young boy and his journey down the Mississippi was the first great novel to speak in a truly American voice. Influencing subsequent generations of writers — from Sherwood Anderson to Twain’s fellow Missourian, T.S. Eliot, from Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner to J.D. Salinger – Huckleberry Finn, like the river which flows through its pages, is one of the great sources which nourished and still nourishes the literature of America.

About The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn,” Ernest Hemingway wrote, “It’s the best book we’ve had.” A complex masterpiece that has spawned volumes of scholarly exegesis and interpretative theories, it is at heart a compelling adventure story. Huck, in flight from his murderous father, and Nigger Jim, in flight from slavery, pilot their raft thrillingly through treacherous waters, surviving a crash with a steamboat, betrayal by rogues, and the final threat from the bourgeoisie. Informing all this is the presence of the River, described in palpable detail by Mark Twain, the former steamboat pilot, who transforms it into a richly metaphoric entity. Twain’s other great innovation was the language of the book itself, which is expressive in a completely original way. “The invention of this language, with all its implications, gave a new dimension to our literature,” Robert Penn Warren noted. “It is a language capable of poetry.”

About The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Introduction by George Saunders
Commentary by Thomas Perry Sergeant, Bernard DeVoto, Clifton Fadiman, T. S. Eliot, and Leo Marx

“All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn,” Ernest Hemingway wrote. “It’s the best book we’ve had.” A complex masterpiece that spawned controversy right from the start (it was banished from the Concord library shelves in 1885), it is at heart a compelling adventure story. Huck, in flight from his murderous father, and Jim, in flight from slavery, pilot their raft through treacherous waters, surviving a crash with a steamboat and betrayal by rogues. As Norman Mailer has said, “The mark of how good Huckleberry Finn has to be is that one can compare it to a number of our best modern American novels and it stands up page for page.”

Praise

“All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. . . . There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.” —Ernest Hemingway