Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Read online

  Table of Contents

  FROM THE PAGES OF ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  MARK TWAIN

  THE WORLD OF MARK TWAIN AND ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN

  Introduction

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER THE LAST

  ENDNOTES

  INSPIRED BY ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN

  COMMENTS & QUESTIONS

  FOR FURTHER READING

  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

  www.barnesandnoble.com/classics

  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 schoo
l 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.

  INTRODUCTION

  Blues for Huckleberry

  Improvisation is the ultimate human (i.e., heroic) endowment ... flexibility or the ability to swing (or to perform with grace under pressure) is the key to that unique competence which generates the self-reliance and thus the charisma of the hero.

  —Albert Murray, The Hero and the Blues

  Without the presence of blacks, [Huckleberry Finn] could not have been written. No Huck and Jim, no American novel as we know it. For not only is the black man a co-creator of the language that Mark Twain raised to the level of literary eloquence, but Jim’s condition as American and Huck’s commitment to freedom are at the moral center of the novel.

  —Ralph Ellison, “What America Would Be Like Without Blacks,” in The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison