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The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is a picaresque novel by Mark Twain published on 9 June 1876 about a boy, Tom Sawyer, growing up along the Mississippi River. It is set in the 1840s in the town of St. Petersburg, which is based on Hannibal, Missouri, where Twain lived as a boy. In the novel, Sawyer has several adventures, often with his friend Huckleberry Finn. Originally a commercial failure, the book ended up being the best-selling of Twain's works during his lifetime. Though overshadowed by its 1885 sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the book is considered by many to be a masterpiece of American literature. It is alleged by Mark Twain to be one of the first novels to be written on a typewriter.
Shelley Fisher Fishkin is the Joseph S. Atha Professor of the Humanities and a professor of English at Stanford University.
References
- ↑ Twain, Mark (1882). "On the Decay of the Art of Lying". The Stolen White Elephant Etc. Boston: James R. Osgood and Company. pp. 217-225. Retrieved December 9, 2018– via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Twain, Mark. Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, & Essays, 1852-1890. Ed. by Louis J. Budd. New York: Library of America, 1992. 1020.