It is commonly regarded as one of the Great American Novels, and is one of the first major American novels written in the vernacular, characterized by local color regionalism. It is told in the first person by Huckleberry "Huck" Finn, best friend of Tom Sawyer and narrator of two other Twain novels.
The book is noted for its colorful description of people and places along the Mississippi River. By satirizing a Southern antebellum society that was already anachronistic at the time, the book is an often scathing look at entrenched attitudes, particularly racism. The drifting journey of Huck and his friend Jim, a runaway slave, down the Mississippi River on their raft may be one of the most enduring images of escape and freedom in all of American literature. The book has been popular with young readers since its publication and is taken as a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. It has also been the continued object of study by serious literary critics. The book was criticized upon release because of its coarse language, and became even more controversial in the 20th century because of its perceived use of racial stereotypes and because of its frequent use of the racial slur, "nigger."
He is extensively quoted. During his lifetime, Twain became a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists, and European royalty. Twain enjoyed immense public popularity. His keen wit and incisive satire earned him praise from both critics and peers. William Faulkner called Twain "the father of American literature".
Bibliography:
(1867) The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (fiction)
(1868) General Washington's Negro Body-Servant (fiction)
(1868) My Late Senatorial Secretaryship (fiction)
(1869) The Innocents Abroad (non-fiction travel)
(1870-71) Memoranda (monthly column for The Galaxy magazine)
(1871) Mark Twain's (Burlesque) Autobiography and First Romance (fiction)
(1872) Roughing It (non-fiction)
(1873) The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (fiction, made into a play)
(1875) Sketches New and Old (fictional stories)
(1876) Old Times on the Mississippi (non-fiction)
(1876) The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (fiction)
(1876) A Murder, a Mystery, and a Marriage (fiction); (1945, private edition), (2001, Atlantic Monthly).
(1877) A True Story and the Recent Carnival of Crime (stories)
(1877) The Invalid's Story (Fiction)
(1878) Punch, Brothers, Punch! and other Sketches (fiction)
(1880) A Tramp Abroad (travel)
(1880) 1601: Conversation, as it was by the Social Fireside, in the Time of the Tudors (fiction)
(1882) The Prince and the Pauper (fiction)
(1883) Life on the Mississippi (non-fiction (mainly))
(1884) Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (fiction)
(1889) A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (fiction)
(1892) The American Claimant (fiction)
(1892) Merry Tales (fiction)
(1892) Those Extraordinary Twins (fiction)
(1893) The Ј1,000,000 Bank Note and Other New Stories (fictional stories)
(1894) Tom Sawyer Abroad (fiction)
(1894) The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson (fiction)
(1896) Tom Sawyer, Detective (fiction)
(1896) Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (fiction)
(1897) How to Tell a Story and other Essays (non-fictional essays)
(1897) Following the Equator (non-fiction travel)
(1898) Is He Dead? (play)
(1900) The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg (fiction)
(1900) A Salutation Speech From the Nineteenth Century to the Twentieth (essay)
(1901) The Battle Hymn of the Republic, Updated (satire)
(1901) Edmund Burke on Croker and Tammany (political satire)
(1901) To the Person Sitting in Darkness (essay)
(1901) To My Missionary Critics (essay) The North Atlantic Review 172(April 1901)
(1902) A Double Barrelled Detective Story (fiction)
(1904) A Dog's Tale (fiction)
(1904) Extracts from Adam's Diary (fiction)
(1905) King Leopold's Soliloquy (political satire)
(1905) The War Prayer (fiction)
(1906) The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories (fiction)
(1906) What Is Man? (essay)
(1906) Eve's Diary (fiction)
(1907) Christian Science (non-fiction)
(1907) A Horse's Tale (fiction)
(1909) Is Shakespeare Dead? (non-fiction)
(1909) Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven (fiction)
(1909) Letters from the Earth (fiction, published posthumously)
(1910) Queen Victoria's Jubilee (non-fiction)
(1912) My Platonic Sweetheart (dream journal, possibly non-fiction)
(1916) The Mysterious Stranger (fiction, possibly not by Twain, published posthumously)
(1923) The United States of Lyncherdom (essay, published posthumously)
(1924) Mark Twain's Autobiography (non-fiction, published posthumously)
(1935) Mark Twain's Notebook (published posthumously)
(1962) Letters from the Earth (posthumous, edited by Bernard DeVoto)
(1969) No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger (fiction, published posthumously)
(1985) Concerning the Jews (published posthumously)
(1992) Mark Twain's Weapons of Satire: Anti-Imperialist Writings on the Philippine-American War. Jim Zwick, ed. (Syracuse University Press) ISBN 0-8156-0268-5 (previously uncollected, published posthumously)
(1995) The Bible According to Mark Twain: Writings on Heaven, Eden, and the Flood (published posthumously)
(2009) Who is Mark Twain? (HarperStudio) ISBN 9780061735004 (previously unpublished, published posthumously)
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