'The perfect novel' Kate Atkinson
Mark Twain's real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens. He was born on
30 November 1835, in Florida, Missouri. Twain worked first as a
printer and then as a pilot on Mississippi steamboats. The name
Mark Twain is a phrase used on riverboats to indicate that the
water is two fathoms deep. Twain later worked as a prospector, a
journalist and a publisher.
Twain wrote many books but his most famous works are The Adventures
of Tom Sawyer (1876) and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885). He
is also well known as the author of The Prince and the Pauper
(1882) and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889).
Twain moved around a great deal during his life and lived in Europe
for some years. He finally settled near Redding in Connecticut
where he died on 21 April 1910.
All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain
called Huckleberry Finn...There was nothing before. There has been
nothing as good since
*Ernest Hemingway*
The quintessential American novel
*Guardian*
It is Huck who gives the book style. The River gives the book its
form. But for the River, the book might be only a sequence of
adventures with a happy ending. A river, a very big and powerful
river, is the only natural force that can wholly determine the
course of human peregrination.... Thus the River makes the book a
great book... Mark Twain is a native, and the River God is his
God
*T.S. Eliot*
The invention of this language, with all its implications, gave a
new dimension to our literature. It is a language capable of
poetry
*Robert Penn Warren*
Running all through the book is the sharpest satire on the
ante-bellum estimate of the slave
*San Francisco Chronicle*
I believe that Huckleberry Finn is one of the great masterpieces of
the world
*H.L. Mencken*
Huckleberry Finn took the first journey back. His eyes were the
first eyes that ever looked at us objectively that were not eyes
from overseas... he wanted to find out about men and how they lived
together. And because he turned back we have him forever
*F. Scott Fitzgerald*
This is the first edition based on both halves of Twain's hand-corrected manuscript, one of which had been missing for a century. There is also a treasure trove of scholarly extras. (LJ 11/1/03) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
In this centenary year of the first American edition of Huckleberry Finn, Neider, who has worked long and well in the thickets of Twain scholarship (this is the ninth Twain volume he has edited), offers a most fitting tribute, for which he will be thanked in some quarters, damned in others. Neider's contribution is twofold: he has restored to its rightful place the great rafting chapter, which the author had lifted from the manuscript-in-progress and dropped into Life on the Mississippi, and he has abridged some of the childish larkiness in the portions in which Huck's friend Tom Sawyer intrudes into this novel. For decades, critics have lamented the absence of the ``missing'' chapter and deplored the jarring presence of Tom in episodes that slow the narrative, but not until now has anyone had the temerity to set matters right. In paring back the ``Tom'' chapters (which he fully documents in his lengthy, spirited introduction, with literal line counts of the excised material), Neider has achieved a brisker read. Though there may be some brickbats thrown at him for this ``sacrilege,'' few should object to the belated appearance of the transplanted rafting chapter in the novel in which it clearly belongs. October 25
All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain
called Huckleberry Finn...There was nothing before.
There has been nothing as good since -- Ernest Hemingway
The quintessential American novel * Guardian *
It is Huck who gives the book style. The River gives the book its
form. But for the River, the book might be only a sequence of
adventures with a happy ending. A river, a very big and powerful
river, is the only natural force that can wholly determine the
course of human peregrination.... Thus the River makes the book a
great book... Mark Twain is a native, and the River God is his God
-- T.S. Eliot
The invention of this language, with all its implications, gave a
new dimension to our literature. It is a language capable of poetry
-- Robert Penn Warren
Running all through the book is the sharpest satire on the
ante-bellum estimate of the slave * San Francisco Chronicle *
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