Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) (The ^AOxford Mark Twain) - Hardcover

Twain, Mark; Fishkin, Shelley Fisher

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195101405 ISBN 13: 9780195101409

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1996

Synopsis

Called "the veriest trash" by a member of the Concord, Massachusetts Library Board that banned the novel when it was first published, Huckleberry Finn has come to be viewed, as H.L. Mencken put it, as "one of the great masterpieces of the world." Ernest Hemingway wrote that "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." As Toni Morrison notes in her introduction, "some of the stillness, in the beautifully rendered eloquence of a child, is breathtaking." Equally stunning is Twain's satirical critique of the hypocrisies and pretensions of adults. A daringly ironic attack on racism American-style, Twain's story of what he once called a "sound heart" triumphing over a "deformed conscience" is poignant, powerful, and fresh. It is no wonder that this extraordinary book continues to captivate readers around the world.

About this title

Review:

A seminal work of American Literature that still commands deep praise and still elicits controversy, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is essential to the understanding of the American soul. The recent discovery of the first half of Twain's manuscript, long thought lost, made front-page news. And this unprecedented edition, which contains for the first time omitted episodes and other variations present in the first half of the handwritten manuscript, as well as facsimile reproductions of thirty manuscript pages, is indispensable to a full understanding of the novel. The changes, deletions, and additions made in the first half of the manuscript indicate that Mark Twain frequently checked his impulse to write an even darker, more confrontational book than the one he finally published.

Book Description:

Cambridge Literature is a series of literary texts edited for study by students aged 14-18 in English-speaking classrooms. It will include novels, poetry, short stories, essays, travel-writing and other non-fiction. The series will be extensive and open-ended and will provide school students with a range of edited texts taken from a wide geographical spread.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0195101405
• ISBN 13: 9780195101409
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 464