The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn

By (author) Twain, Mark
Short description/annotation:
When Huck escapes from his drunken father and the ''sivilizing'' Widow Douglas with the 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''.
Description:

Mark Twain''s great American masterpiece, in a gorgeous new clothbound edition designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith. These delectable and collectible Penguin editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design

Mark Twain''s tale of a boy''s picaresque 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 father and the ''sivilizing'' Widow Douglas with the 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.

Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens on 30th November 1835, in Florida, Missouri. In 1853 he left home, earning a living as an itinerant type-setter, and four years later became an apprentice pilot on the Mississippi, a career cut short by the outbreak of the Civil War. For five years, as a prospector and a journalist, Clemens lived in Nevada and California. In February 1863 he first used the pseudonym ''Mark Twain'' as the signature to a humorous travel letter. A trip to Europe and the Holy Land in 1867 became the basis of his first major book, The Innocents Abroad (1869). His numerous subsequent books include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), A Tramp Aborad (1880), The Prince and the Pauper (1882), and his masterpiece, The Adventures of Huckleberry Fin (1885). Twain died on 21st April 1910.

''The best book we''ve had'' - Ernest Hemingway

Review quote:
"All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. It''s the best book we''ve had." --Ernest Hemingway
Biographical note:
Born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in 1835, Mark Twain spent his youth in Hannibal, Missouri, which forms the setting for his two greatest works, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Trying his hand at printing, typesetting and then gold-mining, the former steam-boat pilot eventually found his calling in journalism and travel writing. Dubbed ''the father of American literature'' by William Faulkner, Twain died in 1910 after a colourful life of travelling, bankruptcy and great literary success.
Promotional headline:
Mark Twain''s tale of a boy''s picaresque journey down the Mississippi on a raft conveyed the voice and experience of the American frontier as no other work had done before.

Excerpt:
CHAPTER 1

DISCOVER MOSES AND THE BULRUSHERS

You don''t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain''t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly--Tom''s Aunt Polly, she is--and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.

Now the way that the book winds up is this: Tom and me found the money that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich. We got six thousand dollars apiece--a