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Inviting readers to participate in literary debate, this important case study of Mark Twain's celebrated novel reprints the 1885 first edition along with critical essays on the major controversies surrounding the novel today. The eighteen essays center on three current critical questions about Huckleberry Finn: Is the ending a success or a failure? Is the text racist? What role do gender and sexuality play in the work? The novel and the essays are supported by distinctive editorial material that helps readers grapple not only with the novel's critical issues but also with cultural debates about literature itself. The editors have provided an introduction to critical conflict in literary studies, a biographical essay on Mark Twain and the reception of Huckleberry Finn, introductions to the controversies (with bibliographies), and a headnote for each selection.

"'Huckleberry Finn' is, among other things, a complex, serious book. And it should be taught as such--to children old enough to think and read with imagination. The supposedly racially insensitive tale, with its repeated use of the word 'nigger,' is the most devastating portrait of American white trash and white-trash racism that has ever been written. 'Huck Finn' savages racism as thoroughly as any document in American history...After 'Huckleberry Finn' was published in 1885, the Public Library in Concord, Massachusetts, banned the book. As the 'Boston Transcript' reported: 'One member of the committee says that, while he does not wish to call it immoral, he thinks it contains but little humor, and that of a very coarse type. He regards it as the veriest trash. The librarian and the other members of the committee entertain similar views, characterizing it as rough, coarse, and inelegant.'"

Lance Morrow, Civilization, Jan.-Feb. 1995

"In 1902, the Omaha Public Library banned 'Huckleberry Finn' on the grounds that 'the influence upon the youthful mind is pernicious.' 'The Omaha World Herald' sent Mark Twain a telegram. His response: 'I am tearfully afraid this noise is doing much harm. It has started a number of hitherto spotless people to reading 'Huck Finn', out of a natural human curiosity to learn what this is all about--people who had not heard of him before; people whose morals will go to wreck and ruin now...The publishers are glad, but it makes me want to borrow a handkerchief and cry. I should be sorry to think it was the publishers themselves that got up this entire little flutter to enable them to unload a book that was taking too much room in their cellars, but you never can tell what a publisher will do. I have been one myself."

T. S. Eliot

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Access Edition: Search Results