The Adventures of
Tom Sawyer
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is an 1876 novel by Mark Twain about a boy growing up along the Mississippi River. It is set in the 1840s in the town of St. Petersburg, which is based on Hannibal, Missouri, where Twain lived as a boy. In the novel, Tom Sawyer has several adventures, often with his friend Huckleberry Finn. Originally a commercial failure, the book ended up being the best selling of Mark Twain's works during his lifetime. Though overshadowed by its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the book is considered by many to be a masterpiece of American literature.
Tom Sawyer is Twain's first attempt to write a novel on his own. He had previously written contemporary autobiographical narratives (The Innocents Abroad, Roughing It) and two short texts called sketches which parody the youth literature of the time. These are The Story of the Good Boy and The Story of the Wicked Little Boy which are satirical texts of a few pages. In the first, a model child is never rewarded and ends up dying before he can declaim his last words which he has carefully prepared. In the second story, an evil little boy steals and lies, like Tom Sawyer, but finishes rich and successful. Tom appears as a mixture of these little boys since he is at the same time a scamp and a boy endowed with a certain generosity.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer has elements of humor, satire and social criticism – features that later made Mark Twain one of the most important authors of American literature.
Excerpted from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer on Wikipedia.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
| Author | Mark Twain |
| Country | United States |
| Genre | Bildungsromans, Adventure, Children's Literature |
| Copyright | Public domain worldwide. |
| Book cover | "Tom Sawyer fishing" Image: True Williams|wikipedia |
| Ebooks | Project Gutenberg |
| Scans | Google-digitized |
| Audio | Librivox | Internet Archive Reader: Group, Dramatic Readings 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 |
| Read online | The Adventures of Tom Sawyer |
