Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Cover)

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Mark Twain1884
Influence50th pct
Popularity96th pct
The Age of the NovelThe American Novel

Read this if you…

  • want one of the most famous American books of all time
  • are interested in a great white southern author wrestling with immorality of slavery/race relations

Skip this if you…

  • didn't love Tom Sawyer
  • hate when writers write out the dialect by spelling stuff wrong and its semi hard to read
  • are expecting it to be as light as tom sawyer (definitely more serious)
Connections

The lineage through The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Built Onwhat came beforeThe Adventures of H…Don QuixoteThe Pilgrim's P…

  • Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn built on it. - Behind Tom and Huck stands Quixote and Sancho — Twain lifts Cervantes' pairing of the deluded romantic and his clear-eyed foil - Tom's elaborate make-believe is pure Quixote: the enchantment device, the insistence that reality conform to the books he's read, with Huck playing the unimpressed Sancho - *Huckleberry Finn* is Cervantes' picaresque illusion-versus-reality structure carried down an American river — reading *Don Quixote* first shows you the mold it was poured in
  • The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn built on it. - Huck picks this very book up in the Grangerfords' parlor (Chapter 17) and pronounces it "interesting, but tough" - Twain put it there on purpose — he owned Bunyan and even called an earlier book *The New Pilgrim's Progress* — using the pious classic to mock a feuding family that brings rifles to the pew - Read Bunyan first and the joke sharpens: the model of the righteous journey, propped up in a house that has lost the thread
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Gallery

Depicted in Art

Huck Finn in ragged hat and trousers, hands in pockets, leans forward grinning — the original cover figure for the first edition.

Edward Windsor Kemble, 1885

Jim carries a tin bucket, head tilted, in three-quarter view — Kemble's introductory portrait of the character.

Edward Windsor Kemble, 1885

Huck creeps out a second-story window into the night to meet Tom Sawyer below.

Edward Windsor Kemble, 1885

On Jackson's Island Jim recoils in terror, certain that Huck — believed drowned — has returned as a ghost.

Edward Windsor Kemble, 1885

Huck stands barefoot in a doorway, a long rifle on his shoulder and a dead rabbit dangling from his hand.

Edward Windsor Kemble, 1884

Inside the floating house, Jim looks down at a corpse face-down on the floor; he tells Huck not to look.

Edward Windsor Kemble, 1885

Editions

Recommended Editions

#1Top Pick$9.00$8.39

Penguin Classics

2002

The Penguin Classics Huck. Uses a reliable scholarly text close to what Twain actually wrote, with an introduction on the river world and notes that earn their keep. The easy reading copy.

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Notable Quotes

All right, then, I'll go to hell.

Huck Finn
All 21 quotes, with sources →
Adaptations

Screen & Stage

Posters via The Movie Database (TMDB)

AcclaimPraised by 7 notable voices
  • Bill Murray, actor, comedian, 1950–: "Huckleberry Finn is a hero to me. In that moment he's his best, his very best. God bless him."
  • Ernest Hemingway, novelist, 1899–1961: "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn."
  • T. S. Eliot, poet & critic, 1888–1965: "Huck is one of the permanent symbolic figures of fiction… not unworthy to take a place with Ulysses, Don Quixote and Hamlet."
  • William Faulkner, novelist, 1897–1962: "Mark Twain was the first truly American writer, and all of us since are his heirs."
  • Toni Morrison, novelist, 1931–2019: "The brilliance of Huckleberry Finn is that it is the argument it raises."
  • Barack Obama, 44th US President, b. 1961: "He's that most essential of American writers."
  • Orson Welles, filmmaker & actor, 1915–1985: "We think Huckleberry Finn is too good a book to be dramatized, exactly speaking, and so we won't."

More by Mark Twain

  1. 66The Adventures of Tom Sawyer1876Mark TwainBreezy·Short·231 pagesInfluence49Popularity89The Age of the NovelAdventureEnglish
  2. 114The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn1884Mark TwainBreezy·Medium·327 pagesInfluence50Popularity96The Age of the NovelAdventureEnglish