Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

Table of Contents

 

 

 

Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it—namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain.

(page 18)

 

If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is
obliged
to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

(page 18)

 

Breakfast over, Aunt Polly had family worship: it began with a prayer built from the ground up of solid courses of Scriptural quotations, welded together with a thin mortar of originality; and from the summit of this she delivered a grim chapter of the Mosaic Law, as from Sinai.

(page 26)

 

Tom was like the rest of the respectable boys, in that he envied Huckleberry his gaudy outcast condition, and was under strict orders not to play with him. So he played with him every time he got a chance.

(page 43)

 

“Dad fetch it! This comes of playing hooky and doing everything a feller’s told
not
to do. I might a been good, like Sid, if I’d a tried—but no, I wouldn‘t, of course. But if ever I get off this time, I lay I’ll just
waller
in Sunday schools!”

(page 69)

 

It seemed glorious sport to be feasting in that wild free way in the virgin forest of an unexplored and uninhabited island, far from the haunts of men, and they said they never would return to civilization.

(page 84)

 

Homely truth is unpalatable.

(page 126)

 

To promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing.

(page 130)

 

There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy’s life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.

(page 141)

 

“A robber is more high-toned than what a pirate is—as a general thing. In most countries they’re awful high up in the nobility—dukes and such.”

(page 202)

Published by Barnes & Noble Books
122 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10011

 

 

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
was first published in 1876.

 

Originally published in mass market format in 2003 by Barnes & Noble Classics
with new Introduction, Notes, Biography, Chronology, Inspired By,
Comments & Questions, and For Further Reading.
This trade paperback edition published in 2008.

 

Introduction, Notes, and For Further Reading

Copyright @ 2003 by H. Daniel Peck.

 

Note on Mark Twain, The World of Mark Twain and
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,
Inspired by
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,
and Comments & Questions
Copyright © 2003 by Barnes & Noble, Inc.

 

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system,
without the prior written permission of the publisher.

 

Barnes & Noble Classics and the Barnes & Noble Classics
colophon are trademarks of Barnes & Noble, Inc.

 

ISBN-13: 978-1-59308-139-3 ISBN-10: 1-59308-139-1

eISBN : 978-1-411-43170-6

LC Control Number 2007941536

 

 

Produced and published in conjunction with:
Fine Creative Media, Inc.
322 Eighth Avenue
New York, NY 10001

 

Michael J. Fine, President and Publisher

 

Printed in the United States of America
QM
3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4

Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens on November 30, 1835. When Sam was four years old, his family moved to Hannibal, Missouri, a small town later immortalized in
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
and
Adventure
s
of Huckleberry Finn.
After the death of his father, twelve-year-old Sam quit school and supported his family by working as a delivery boy, a grocer’s clerk, and an assistant blacksmith until he was thirteen, when he became an apprentice printer. He worked for several newspapers, traveled throughout the country, and established himself as a gifted writer of humorous sketches. Abandoning journalism at points to work as a riverboat pilot, Clemens adven tured up and down the Mississippi, learning the 1,200 miles of the river.

During the 1860s he spent time in the West, in newspaper work and panning for gold, and traveled to Europe and the Holy Land;
The Innocents Abroad
(1869) and
Roughing It
(1872) are accounts of those experiences. In 1863 Samuel Clemens adopted a pen name, signing a sketch as “Mark Twain,” and in 1867 Mark Twain won fame with publication of a collection of humorous writings,
The Celebrated Jumping
Frog
of Calaveras County and Other Sketches.
After marrying and settling in Connecticut, Twain wrote his best-loved works: the novels about Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, and the nonfiction work
Life on the Mississippi.
Meanwhile, he continued to travel and had a successful career as a public lecturer.

In his later years, Twain saw the world with increasing pessimism following the death of his wife and two of their three daughters. The tone of his later novels, including
The Tragedy of Pudd‘nhead Wilson
and
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court,
became cynical and dark. Having failed as a publisher and suffering losses from ill-advised investments, Twain was forced by financial necessity to maintain a heavy schedule of lecturing. Though he had left school at an early age, his genius was recognized by Yale University, the University of Missouri, and Oxford University in the form of honorary doctorate degrees. He died in his Connecticut mansion, Stormfield, on April 21, 1910.