The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Mark Twain (Penguin classics) - Softcover

Twain, Mark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141439645 ISBN 13: 9780141439648

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2003

Synopsis

Mark Twain's witty, satirical tale of childhood rebellion against hypocritical adult authority, the Penguin Classics edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is edited with a critical introduction by Peter Coveney.

Mark Twain's story of a boy's journey down the Mississippi on a raft conveyed the voice and experience of the American frontier as no other work had done before. When Huck escapes from his drunken, abusive 'Pap' and the 'sivilizing' Widow Douglas with runaway slave Jim, he embarks on a series of adventures that draw him to feuding families and the trickery of the unscrupulous 'Duke' and 'Dauphin'. Beneath the exploits, however, are more serious undercurrents - of slavery, adult control and, above all, of Huck's struggle between his instinctive goodness and the corrupt values of society which threaten his deep and enduring friendship with Jim.

Based on the first edition of 1884, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn includes a chronology and list of further reading by Richard Maxwell.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910) trained as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi river; 'Mark Twain', a phrase used on riverboats to indicate that the water is two fathoms deep, became the pseudonym by which he was best known. After the Civil War, Twain turned to journalism, publishing his first short story in 1865. Dubbed 'the father of American literature' by William Faulkner, Twain led a colourful life of travelling, bankruptcy and great literary success.

If you enjoyed The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, you may like Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, also available in Penguin Classics.

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

'Huckleberry Finn, like other great works of imagination, can give to every reader whatever he is capable of taking from it'
T.S. Eliot

About this title

Review:

A seminal work of American literature that still commands deep praise and elicits controversy, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is essential to the understanding of the American soul. The recent discovery of the first half of Twain's manuscript, long thought to be lost, made front-page news. And this unprecedented edition, which contains for the first time omitted episodes and other variations present in the first half of the handwritten manuscript, as well as facsimile reproductions of thirty manuscript pages, is indispensable to a fuller understanding of the novel. The changes, deletions and additions made in the first half of the manuscript indicate that Mark Twain frequently checked his impulse to write an even darker, more confrontational book than the one he finally published.

Review:

"One of the great scholarly enterprises of the century. . . . If you want to enjoy, and to understand fully, the genius of Mark Twain, the California editions are the only texts to have." "London Telegraph [Michael Shelden]

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0141439645
• ISBN 13: 9780141439648
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400
• Editor: Coveney Peter