The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is a very well-known and popular story concerning American youth. Mark Twain’s lively tale of the scrapes and adventures of boyhood is set in St. Petersburg,... More > Missouri, where Tom Sawyer and his friend Huckleberry Finn have the kinds of adventures many boys can imagine: racing bugs during class, impressing girls, especially Becky Thatcher, with fights and stunts in the schoolyard, getting lost in a cave, and playing pirates on the Mississippi River. One of the most famous incidents in the book describes how Tom persuades his friends to do a boring, hateful chore for him: whitewashing (i.e., painting) a fence. This was the first novel to be written on a typewriter.< Less
The Prince and the Pauper (1882) represents Mark Twain’s first attempt at historical fiction. The book, set in 1547, tells the story of two young boys who are identical in appearance: Tom... More > Canty, a pauper who lives with his abusive father in Offal Court, London, and Prince Edward son of Henry VIII of England. Due to a series of circumstances, the boys accidentally replace each other, and much of the humor in the book originates in the two boys’ inability to function in the world that is so familiar to the other (although Tom soon displays considerable wisdom in his decisions). In many ways, the book is a social satire, particularly compelling in its condemnation of the inequality that existed between the classes in Tudor England. In that sense, Twain abandoned the wry Midwestern style for which he was best known and adopts a style reminiscent of Charles Dickens.< Less
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court is an 1889 novel by American humorist and writer Mark Twain. The work is a very early example of time travel in literature, anticipating by six years... More > H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine of 1895 (however, unlike Wells, Twain does not give any real explanation of his protagonist’s traveling in time). Some early editions are entitled A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur.< Less
