Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

BOOK: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
5.44Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Table of Contents
 
 
 
FROM THE PAGES OF
ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN
That is just the way with some people. They get down on a thing when they don’t know nothing about it. (page 6)
 
Pap warn’t in a good humor—so he was his natural self. (page 26)
 
When I woke up I didn’t know where I was, for a minute. I set up and looked around, a little scared. Then I remembered. The river looked miles and miles across. The moon was so bright I could a counted the drift logs that went a slipping along, black and still, hundreds of yards out from shore. Everything was dead quiet, and it looked late, and
smelt
late. You know what I mean—I don’t know the words to put it in.
(page 34)
 
When it was dark I set by my camp fire smoking, and feeling pretty satisfied; but by-and-by it got sort of lonesome, and so I went and set on the bank and listened to the currents washing along, and counted the stars and drift-logs and rafts that come down, and then went to bed; there ain’t no better way to put in time when you are lonesome; you can’t stay so, you soon get over it. (page 38)
 
What’s the use you learning to do right, when it’s troublesome to do right and ain’t no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same?
(page 85)
 
We said there warn’t no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don’t. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft. (page 107)
It’s lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky, up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made, or only just happened—Jim he allowed they was made, but I allowed they happened; I judged it would have took too long to
make
so many. (pages 109-110)
 
“All kings is mostly rapscallions, as fur as I can make out.” (page 140)
 
“Hain’t we got all the fools in town on our side? and ain’t that a big enough majority in any town?” (page 162)
 
I reckon a body that ups and tells the truth when he is in a tight place, is taking considerable many resks. (page 170)
 
“It’s the little things that smoothes people’s roads the most.” (page 173)
 
You can’t pray a lie—I found that out. (page 194)
 
It don’t make no difference whether you do right or wrong, a person’s conscience ain’t got no sense, and just goes for him
anyway.
(page 210)

BARNES & NOBLE CLASSICS
NEW YORK
 
 
 
Published by Barnes & Noble Books
122 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10011
 
 
 
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
was first published in America in 1885.
 
Originally published in mass market format in 2003 by Barnes & Noble Classics
with new Introduction, Notes, Biography, Chronology, Inspired By,
Comments & Questions, and For Further Reading.
This trade paperback edition published in 2008.
 
Introduction, Notes, and For Further Reading
Copyright @ 2003 by Robert G. O‘Meally.
 
Note on Mark Twain, The World of Mark Twain and
Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn,
Inspired by
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,
and Comments & Questions
Copyright © 2003 by Barnes & Noble, Inc.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system,
without the prior written permission of the publisher.
 
Barnes & Noble Classics and the Barnes & Noble Classics
colophon are trademarks of Barnes & Noble, Inc.
 
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
ISBN-13: 978-1-59308-112-6 ISBN-10: 1-59308-112-X
eISBN : 978-1-411-43372-4
LC Control Number 2007941537
 
 
Produced and published in conjunction with:
Fine Creative Media, Inc.
322 Eighth Avenue
New York, NY 10001
 
Michael J. Fine, President and Publisher
 
Printed in the United States of America
 
QM
3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4
MARK TWAIN
Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens on November 30, 1835. When Sam was four years old, his family moved to Hannibal, Missouri, a small town later immortalized in
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
and
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
After the death of his father, twelve-year-old Sam quit school and supported his family by working as a delivery boy, a grocer’s clerk, and an assistant blacksmith until he was thirteen, when he became an apprentice printer. He worked for several newspapers, traveled throughout the country, and established himself as a gifted writer of humorous sketches. Abandoning journalism at points to work as a riverboat pilot, Clemens adven tured up and down the Mississippi, learning the 1,200 miles of the river.
During the 1860s he spent time in the West, in newspaper work and panning for gold, and traveled to Europe and the Holy Land;
The Innocents Abroad
(1869) and
Roughing It
(1872), published some years later, are accounts of those experiences. In 1863 Samuel Clemens adopted a pen name, signing a sketch as “Mark Twain,” and in 1867 Mark Twain won fame with publication of a collection of humorous writings,
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and Other Sketches.
After marrying and settling in Connecticut, Twain wrote his best-loved works: the novels about Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, and the nonfiction work
Life on the Mississippi.
Meanwhile, he continued to travel and had a successful career as a public lecturer.
In his later years, Twain saw the world with increasing pessimism following the death of his wife and two of their three daughters. The tone of his later novels, including The Tragedy
of Pudd‘nhead Wilson
and
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court,
became cynical and dark. Having failed as a publisher and suffering losses from ill-advised investments, Twain was forced by financial necessity to maintain a heavy schedule of lecturing. Though he had left school at an early age, his genius was recognized by Yale University, the University of Missouri, and Oxford University in the form of honorary doctorate degrees. He died in his Connecticut mansion, Stormfield, on April 21, 1910.
THE WORLD OF MARK TWAIN AND
ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN
1835
Samuel Langhorne Clemens is born prematurely in Florida, Mis souri, the fourth child of John Marshall Clemens and Jane Lamp ton Clemens.
1839
The family moves to Hannibal, the small Missouri town on the west bank of the Mississippi River that will become the model for the setting of
Tom Sawyer
and
Huckleberry Finn.
1840
American newspapers gain increased readership as urban popu lations swell and printing technology improves.
1847
John Clemens dies, leaving the family in financial difficulty. Sam quits school at the age of twelve.
1848
Sam becomes a full-time apprentice to Joseph Ament of the Mis souri
Courier.
1850
Sam’s brother Orion, ten years his senior, returns to Hannibal and establishes the
Journal;
he hires Sam as a compositor. Steam boats become the primary means of transport on the Mississippi River.
1852
Sam edits the failing
Journal
while Orion is away. After he reads local humor published in newspapers in New England and the Southwest, Sam begins printing his own humorous sketches in the
Journal.
He submits “The Dandy Frightening the Squatter” to the
Carpet-Bag
of Boston, which publishes the sketch in the May issue.
1853
Sam leaves Hannibal and begins working as an itinerant printer; he visits St. Louis, New York, and Philadelphia. His brothers Orion and Henry move to Iowa with their mother.
1854
Transcendentalism flourishes in American literary culture; Henry David Thoreau publishes
Walden.
1855
Sam works again as a printer with Orion in Keokuk, Iowa.
1856
Sam acquires a commission from Keokuk’s
Daily
Post to write humorous letters; he decides to travel to South America.
1857
Sam takes a steamer to New Orleans, where he hopes to find a ship bound for South America. Instead, he signs on as an ap prentice to river pilot Horace Bixby and spends the next two years learning how to navigate a steamship up and down the Missis sippi. His experiences become material for
Life on the Mississippi
and his tales of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.
1858
Sam’s brother Henry dies in a steamboat accident.
1859
Samuel Clemens becomes a fully licensed river pilot.
1861
The American Civil War erupts, putting an abrupt stop to river trade between North and South. Sam serves with a Confederate militia for two weeks before venturing to the Nevada Territory with Orion, who had been appointed by President Abraham Lin coln as secretary of the new Territory.
1862
After an unsuccessful stint as a miner and prospector for gold and silver, Clemens begins reporting for the
Territorial Enterprise
in Virginia City, Nevada.
1863
Clemens signs his name as “Mark Twain” on a humorous travel sketch printed in the
Territorial Enterprise.
The pseudonym, a riverboat term meaning “two fathoms deep,” connotes barely nav igable water.
1864
After challenging his editor to a duel, Twain is forced to leave Nevada and lands a job with a San Francisco newspaper. He meets Artemus Ward, a popular humorist, whose techniques greatly influence Twain’s writing.
1865
Robert E. Lee’s army surrenders, ending the Civil War. While prospecting for gold in Calaveras County, California, Twain hears a tale he uses for a story that makes him famous; originally titled “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog,” it is published in New York’s
Saturday
Press.
1866
Twain travels to Hawaii as a correspondent for the
Sacramento Union;
upon his return to California, he delivers his first public lecture, beginning a successful career as a humorous speaker.
1867
Twain travels to New York, and then to Europe and the Holy Land aboard the steamer
Quaker City;
during five months abroad, he contributes to California’s largest paper, Sacramento’s
Alta California,
and writes several letters for the New York
Tribune.
He publishes a volume of stories and sketches,
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and Other Sketches.
1868
Twain meets and falls in love with Olivia (Livy) Langdon. His overseas writings have increased his popularity; he signs his first book contract and begins
The Innocents Abroad,
sketches based on his trip to the Holy Land. He embarks on a lecture tour of the American Midwest.
1869
Twain becomes engaged to Livy, who acts as his editor from that time on.
The Innocents Abroad,
published as a subscription book, is an instant success, selling nearly 100,000 copies in the first three years.
1870
Twain and Livy marry. Their son, Langdon, is born; he lives only two years.
1871
The Clemens move to Hartford, Connecticut.
1872
Roughing It,
an account of Twain’s adventures out West, is pub lished to enormous success. The first of Twain’s three daughters, Susy, is born. Twain strikes up a lifelong friendship with the writer William Dean Howells.
1873
Ever the entrepreneur, Twain receives the patent for
Mark Twain’s Self-Pasting Scrapbook,
an invention that is a commercial success. He publishes The
Gilded Age,
a collaboration with his neighbor Charles Dudley Warner that satirizes the post-Civil War era.
1874
His daughter Clara is born. The family moves into a mansion in Hartford in which they will live for the next seventeen years.
1876
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
is published.
1877
Twain collaborates with Bret Harte—an author known for his use of local color and humor and for his parodies of Cooper, Dickens, and Hugo—to produce the play
Ah Sin.
1880
Twain invests in the Paige typesetter and loses thousands of dol lars. He publishes A
Tramp Abroad,
an account of his travels in Europe the two previous years. His daughter Jean is born.
1881
The Prince and the Pauper,
Twain’s first historical romance, is published.
1882
Twain plans to write about the Mississippi River and makes the trip from New Orleans to Minnesota to refresh his memory.
1883
The nonfiction work
Life on the Mississippi
is published.
1884
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,
a book Twain worked on for
nearly ten years, is published in England; publication in the United States is delayed until the following year because an il lustration plate is judged to be obscene.
1885
When
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
is published in America—by Twain’s ill-fated publishing house, run by his nephew Charles Webster—controversy immediately surrounds the book. Twain also publishes the memoirs of his friend former President Ulysses S. Grant.
1888
Twain earns his Master of Arts degree from Yale University.
1889
He publishes
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court,
the first of his major works to be informed by a deep pessimism. He meets Rudyard Kipling, who had come to America to meet Twain, in Livy’s hometown of Elmira, New York.
1890
Twain’s mother dies.
1891
Financial difficulties force the Clemens family to close their Hart ford mansion; they move to Berlin, Germany.
1894
The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson,
a dark novel about the after math of slavery, is published and sells well; nonetheless, Twain’s publishing company fails and leaves him bankrupt.
1895
Twain embarks on an ambitious worldwide lecture tour to restore his financial position.
1896
His daughter Susy dies of spinal meningitis.
1901
Twain is awarded an honorary doctorate degree from Yale.
1902
Livy falls gravely ill.
Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn,
a stage ad aptation of the novel, opens to favorable reviews. Though he is credited with coauthorship, Twain has little to do with the play and never sees it performed. He receives an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Missouri.
1903
Hoping to restore Livy’s health, Twain takes her to Florence, Italy.
1904
Livy dies, leaving Twain devastated. He begins dictating an un even autobiography that he never finishes.
1905
Theodore Roosevelt invites Twain to the White House. Twain enjoys a gala celebrating his seventieth birthday in New York. He continues to lecture, and he addresses Congress on copyright is sues.
1906
Twain’s biographer Albert Bigelow Paine moves in with the fam ily.
1907
Twain travels to Oxford University to receive an honorary Doctor of Letters degree.
1908
Twain settles in Redding, Connecticut, at Stormfield, the man sion that is his final home.
1909
His daughter Clara marries; Twain dons his Oxford robe for the ceremony. His daughter Jean dies.
1910
Twain travels to Bermuda for his health. He develops heart prob lems and, upon his return to Stormfield, dies, leaving behind a cache of unpublished work.
BOOK: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
5.44Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

The Fight to Survive by Terry Bisson
The Ice is Singing by Jane Rogers
The Heartbreak Lounge by Wallace Stroby
On Track for Treasure by Wendy McClure
Agent in Training by Jerri Drennen