The Adventures of Tom Sawyer | |
![]() Frontispiece of 1st edition |
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Author | Mark Twain |
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Cover artist | created by Mark Twain |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Genre(s) | Bildungsroman, Picaresque, Satire, Folk, Children's Novel |
Publisher | American Publishing Company |
Publication date | 1876 |
Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
Pages | 275pp |
ISBN | NA |
Followed by | Adventures of Huckleberry Finn |
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain, is a popular 1876 novel about a young boy growing up in the antebellum South on the Mississippi River in the fictional town of St. Petersburg, Missouri.
Contents |
Tom Sawyer, a mischievous orphan taken in by his Aunt Polly, goes through a series of adventures involving his friends, Joe Harper and Huckleberry Finn. Tom is a mischievous mastermind and a trickster. He escapes punishment many times by his tricks and charms. Though he is often foolish and unpredictable, he also is somewhat smart and has a good sense of humor. When not trying to win his sweetheart, Becky Thatcher, Tom is either getting into mischief or going on an adventure. Many times, Tom suddenly changes from his grinning self into a fearsome pirate or anything else he can think of. His laugh changes into a bloodcurdling yell or a barking captain's voice. Tom Sawyer's main doings are racing bugs, impressing girls with fights and stunts in the schoolyard, getting lost in a cave, finding treasure, and playing pirates on the Mississippi River. Tom Sawyer persuades his friends to whitewash, or paint a long fence for him.
See List of characters in the Tom Sawyer series.
The sales of Tom Sawyer were lukewarm at first. It initially sold less than a third as many copies as Twain's Innocents Abroad. By the time of Mark Twain's death, however, Tom Sawyer was both an American classic and a bestseller. It is arguably the work for which Twain is best known today.
Tom Sawyer also appears in three other Mark Twain books:
Of these, Huckleberry Finn, in which Tom Sawyer is only a minor character, is considered by many to have the most literary merit.
The first publication of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was by Chatto and Windus in England and came six months prior to the U.S. publication. Initial publication in England was often used by Twain, since otherwise it was impossible to obtain a copyright in the British Commonwealth. In the case of Tom Sawyer, the delay between the London and U.S. editions extended much beyond what Twain envisioned, or desired. This led to widespread piracy of the work and, Twain believed, a significant loss of royalties.
When the work did appear in the U.S., it was sold by subscription only. In this distribution method, book agents across the country took orders for the book prior to publication and then delivered the book when available. It was only with subsequent editions that the book became available at retail shops.
The story of Tom Sawyer has been filmed or animated multiple times since its initial publication. Some of the film adaptations of Twain's novel include:
In dictations for his autobiography, Twain claimed Tom Sawyer "must have been" the first book whose manuscript was typed on a typewriter. However, typewriter historian Darryl Rehr has concluded that Twain's first typed manuscript was Life on the Mississippi.[1]
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