The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Front Cover
Harper & Brothers, 1896 - 327 pages
Here is the story of Tom, Huck, Becky, and Aunt Polly; a tale of adventures, pranks, playing hookey, and summertime fun. One of the nineteenth century's greatest chroniclers of childhood, Mark Twain's novel captures the sheer pleasure of being a boy. Tom Sawyer is as clever, imaginative, and resourceful as he is reckless and mischievous, carrying on under the watchful eye of his Aunt Polly. Part trickster, part escape artist, and full-time romantic, he spins fantastic tales of noble derring-do and adventure--dragging his pal Huck Finn and his 'sweetheart' Becky Thatcher into a real-life escapade involving theft, courtroom drama, and murder.

From inside the book

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 1 - You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly.
Page iii - NOTICE Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.
Page 12 - I've .seen it in books; and so of course that's what we've got to do." ' ' But how can we do it if we don't know what it is ?" "Why, blame it all, we've got to do it. Don't I tell you it's in the books? Do you want to go to doing different from what's in the books, and get things all muddled up?
Page 155 - ... fanning you from over there, so cool and fresh and sweet to smell on account of the woods and the flowers; but sometimes not that way, because they've left dead fish laying around, gars and such, and they do get pretty rank; and next you've got the full day, and everything smiling in the sun, and the song-birds just going it! A little smoke couldn't be noticed now, so we would take some fish off of the lines and cook up a hot breakfast. And afterwards we would watch the lonesomeness of the river,...
Page 136 - O no. Then list with tearful eye, Whilst I his fate do tell. His soul did from this cold world fly By falling down a well. They got him out and emptied him; Alas it was too late; His spirit was gone for to sport aloft In the realms of the good and great. If Emmeline Grangerford could make poetry like that before she was fourteen, there ain't no telling what she could 'a
Page 282 - I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now.
Page 386 - Tom's most well, now, and got his bullet around his neck on a watchguard for a watch, and is always seeing what time it is, and so there ain't nothing more to write about, and I am rotten glad of it, because if I'da knowed what a trouble it was to make a book I wouldn'ta tackled it and ain't agoing to no more.
Page v - In this book a number of dialects are used, to wit : the Missouri Negro dialect ; the extremest form of the backwoods Southwestern dialect; the ordinary "Pike County" dialect; and four modified varieties of this last. The shadings have not been done in a haphazard fashion or by guesswork ; but painstakingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity with these several forms of speech.
Page 83 - ... Well, try to remember it, George. Don't forget and tell me it's Elexander before you go, and then get out by saying it's George-Elexander when I catch you. And don't go about women in that old calico. You do a girl tolerable poor, but you might fool men, maybe. Bless you, child, when you set out to thread a needle, don't hold the thread still and fetch the needle up to it; hold the needle still and poke the thread at it — that's the way a woman most always does; but a man always does 'tother...
Page 122 - I'd feel just the same way I do now. Well, then, says I, 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? I was stuck. I couldn't answer that. So I reckoned I wouldn't bother no more about it, but after this always do whichever come handiest at the time. I went into the wigwam; Jim warn't there. I looked all around; he warn't anywhere. I says: "Jim!" "Here I is, Huck. Is dey out o

Bibliographic information