Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn (Wordsworth Classics)

With an Introduction and Notes by Stuart Hutchinson, University of Kent at Canterbury.

Tom Sawyer, a shrewd and adventurous boy, is as much at home in the respectable world of his Aunt Polly as in the self-reliant and parentless world of his friend Huck Finn. The two enjoy a series of thrilling adventures, including:

• Accidentally witnessing a murder.
• Establishing the innocence of the man wrongly accused.
• Being hunted by Injun Joe, the true murderer.
• Escaping danger and discovering the treasure that Joe had buried.

Huckleberry Finn recounts the further adventures of Huck, who:

• Runs away from a drunken and brutal father.
• Meets up with the escaped slave, Jim.
• Floats down the Mississippi on a raft, participating in the lives of the characters they encounter.
• Witnesses corruption, moral decay, and intellectual impoverishment.

Sharing so much in background and character, these two stories, the best of Twain, indisputably belong together in one volume.

Though originally written as adventure stories for young people, the vivid writing provides a profound commentary on:

• Provincial American life in the mid-nineteenth century.
• The institution of slavery.