Twain the Author: Novels
Mark Twain once defined a “classic” novel as “a book which people praise and don't read.” It is a testament to Twain’s talent as a writer and humorist that so many of his works are both. His popular novels transformed the American literary landscape: Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn turned boyhood into heroism, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court popularized the idea of time travel, and The Gilded Age lent its name to an era.
Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner. The Gilded Age: A Tale of To-Day. Hartford: American Publishing Company, 1873.
When Twain and Warner lamented the quality of the books their wives were reading, the women challenged them to write something better. The resulting collaboration is the book whose name lent itself to the era: The Gilded Age, a satire on post–Civil War American corruption. This copy is in the publisher’s full sheep binding.
Mark Twain. The Prince and the Pauper: A Tale for Young People of All Ages. Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1882.
Twain’s first attempt at historical fiction, of which he notes, “It may have happened, it may not have happened: but it could have happened.” He presented this copy, in the publisher’s half-morocco binding, to Dr. Clarence C. Rice—Clemens’s personal physician who introduced the financially troubled author to financial wizard Henry H. Rogers (who ultimately led Clemens to solvency)—and signed it from “the Author.”
Mark Twain. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Hartford: American Publishing Company, 1876.
The first edition of Twain’s classic novel about the mischievous, rough-and-tumble Tom Sawyer’s amusing adventures along the Mississippi River. He hoped the book would have broad appeal: “Although my book is intended mainly for the entertainment of boys and girls, I hope it will not be shunned by men and women on that account, for part of my plan has been to try to pleasantly remind adults of what they once were themselves, and how they felt and thought and talked, and what queer enterprises they sometimes engaged in.”
Mark Twain. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade). New York: Charles L. Webster and Company, 1885.
Nine years after Tom Sawyer, Twain published a sequel, written in the unpolished first-person voice of Tom’s vagabond companion Huckleberry Finn. Twain inscribed this copy, in the publisher’s green cloth binding, to Edith Beecher, the granddaughter of Henry Ward Beecher and grandniece of his Hartford neighbor Harriet Beecher Stowe, and signed it “Mark Twain.”
Mark Twain. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade). New York: Charles L. Webster and Company, 1885.
The publication of Huckleberry Finn was complicated by a controversial plate showing an illustration of the character Uncle Silas, wherein the engraver appeared to have added a crude addition to the groin area of Silas’s trousers. Webster required the book’s salespeople to destroy the offending sheet in their samples; only the earliest copies of the first edition (bound in sheep and intended for libraries), like the one shown here, contained the original “curved fly” illustration (preceding the indecent addition). The plate was corrected with a straighter fly on Silas’s trousers for the copies bound in cloth.
Mark Twain. Autograph manuscript leaf from “Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer Among the Indians.” [Ca. 1884–1889.] 1 p.
At the conclusion of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Tom and Huck discuss a plan to “go for howling adventures amongst the Injuns,” and shortly after the novel’s publication, Clemens began work on a sequel detailing these escapades. He penned over two hundred manuscript pages of the book, but did not complete it, and it remained unpublished until 1968.
Dodge, Richard Irving. Our Wild Indians: Thirty-three Years’ Personal Experience among the Red Men of the Great West. Hartford: A.D. Worthington and Company, 1883.
Though dated in some respects, Dodge’s cultural survey of the peoples of the Great Plains and the Southwest remains a vital reference for study of the indigenous peoples of the region. This copy is Clemens’s own, which he studied and extensively annotated while preparing to write Huck and Tom Among the Indians. Among the 350 individual annotations in his copy of the book are handwritten plot ideas for the story.
Mark Twain (“editor”). Tom Sawyer Abroad. By Huck Finn. New York: Charles L. Webster and Company, 1894.
Twain continued to capitalize on the success of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn throughout his career, but his later sequels placed the characters into increasingly unlikely situations. In this short sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Tom and Huck take a hot-air balloon across the Atlantic to Africa.
[Samuel L. Clemens.] “Map of The Trip made by Tom Sawyer Erronort.” [N.p., ca. 1893].
In Tom Sawyer Abroad, Huck explains the malapropism in the legend of this hand-drawn map: “[Tom] said an erronort was a person who sailed around in balloons; and said it was a mighty sight finer to be Tom Sawyer the Erronort than to be Tom Sawyer the Traveler, and we would be heard of all round the world, if we pulled through all right, and so he wouldn’t give shucks to be a traveler now.”
Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library
Mark Twain. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. New York: Charles L. Webster & Company, 1889.
In Twain’s time-travel story, American engineer Hank Morgan finds himself transported to medieval Camelot, bringing progressive values to the age of chivalry. Twain presented this first edition copy to George L. Bell, a toolmaker who was involved in the production of the Paige Compositor, a failed invention that cost Twain his fortune.
Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens). The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson, and the Comedy of Those Extraordinary Twins. Hartford: American Publishing Company, 1894.
This later Twain novel is steeped in irony: its eponymous character, a lawyer, is dubbed a “Pudd’nhead” not because of his stupidity, but because the unsophisticated inhabitants of his frontier town misunderstand his cleverness. The main plot of the novel updates the basic concept of The Prince and the Pauper with biting social criticism, contrasting the lives of a pair of young men who were switched at infancy—one white, one 1/32 Black (and thus nonwhite under the “one-drop” principle that guided racist legislation of the era).
Edward Ardizzone. Original illustrations for The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. [1960–1961.] Pen and ink on paper.
Renowned British illustrator Edward Ardizzone created this series of pen-and-ink illustrations for a school edition of Huckleberry Finn published by Heinemann Educational in 1961. Twain’s classic novel continues to inspire new editions and adaptations today, including Percival Everett’s recent retelling, James.