Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (The Oxford Mark Twain) - Hardcover

Twain, Mark

3.83

1,264,881 ratings by Goodreads

9780195114096: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (The Oxford Mark Twain)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195114094 ISBN 13: 9780195114096

Publisher: Oxford Univ Pr, 1996

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

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 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 full understanding of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The changes, deletions, and additions that Mark Twain made in the first half of the original manuscript (changes that are larger and more numerous and significant than those he made in the second half) indicate that he frequently checked his impulse to write an even darker, more confrontational work than the book he finally published. He deleted an episode in which whites at a religious camp meeting try to avoid the embraces of a black slave woman - a woman who may think, mistakenly, that she has just been freed. And even in its smallest variations - such as the consistent alteration of vicious rawhide whippings to ordinary cowhide whippings - the original manuscript demonstrates the skill, the restraint, and the constraints that affected Mark Twain's creative process.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Product Description:

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.

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.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.