The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - (Harper Perennial Deluxe Editions) by Mark Twain (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

One of the best-known classics of American literature, Mark Twain's indelible novel of boyhood, friendship, and adventure.

Few works of fiction are more known and beloved for keenly documenting the triumphs, trials, exultations, and despairs of boyhood than The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Set in 1840s Missouri, Mark Twain's picaresque novel follows a rambunctious, rebellious rascal whose exploits are the delight of the town boys and the bane of the adults trying to "civilize" them at home, in school, and at church.

Tom and his friends, including Huck Finn (the son of the town drunk and star of Twain's subsequent masterpiece, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn), skip school and run away, play pirates and robbers, go hunting in caves, fake their own deaths, poke around haunted houses, frolic along the river banks, and triumphantly interrupt their own funeral sermons. They believe in magic and superstitions, witness body snatchers and murder, and search for--and find--buried treasure.

Twain's mastery of satire and droll humor, his unparalleled narrative skill in capturing the incomparable fierce joys of childhood, and his piercing attentiveness to the ever-present tension between the freedom of adolescence and the confining expectations of social propriety have made this timeless tale of Americana a revered classic for generations that continues to enthrall readers today.

This deluxe edition features French flaps, a deckle edge, and a stunning cover designed using authentic printers and metal/wood type manufactured in the 1840s.

Review Quotes

"Exquisitely humorous. . . finely wrought. . . . A masterly reproduction of boy life and feeling." - Boston Daily Globe

"Mark Twain has written a book which will not only charm elder readers . . . but will be of value to philosophers. . . . The humor of the book breaks out everywhere in little touches." - Star Tribune

"A wonderful study of the boy-mind, which inhabits a world quite distinct from that in which he is bodily present with his elders, and in this lies its great charm and its universality, for boy-nature, however human nature varies, is the same everywhere." - The Atlantic