Skip to main content Skip to Search Box

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain (1884)

From Encyclopedia of the Environment in American Literature
Published in 1884, but set during the pre-Civil War 1840s, Samuel Clemens’ The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn invokes and complicates 19th-century literary conventions and cultural assumptions about nature and societal norms. Clemens, writing for a popular audience in what many authors and critics — including Ernest Hemingway — have claimed is the most important American novel ever written, begins his famous work with a warning to readers: “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 will be shot” (2). It proves to be an ironic admonition for a text that has cultivated a cottage industry of criticism, much of which wrestles with the role that nature plays in this semi-fictive world set on and near the Mississippi River and the western frontier. In this regard, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn seems to insist that those interested in the relationship between the…
227 results
1884 Work Author: Mark Twain A sequel to Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is considered a greater work of literature for its entertaining, picaresque style and for Twain's more complex exploration of social and political issues such as slavery and the…
| 411 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
| 30 words
Key concepts:
A novel by ‘ Mark *Twain ’ (S. L. Clemens) begun in the summer of 1876 but not completed until 1884. It was published in that year by Chatto and Windus of London and early in 1885 by Charles Webster of New York. The book is a sequel to The *Adventures of Tom Sawyer , at the end of which Tom and…
| 900 words
Key concepts:
US writer. He worked as a steamboat pilot and took his pen-name from a term used for measuring the depth of the Mississippi. His novel Huckleberry Finn (1884) is a classic. His work ranges from the lightly comic The Innocents Abroad (1869) to the darkly pessimistic What is Man? (1906). No woman can…
| 2,234 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article Mark Twain (1835–1910)

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
Are you going to hang him anyhow – and try him afterward? Innocents at Home A classic – something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read. Quoting Professor Caleb Winchester in a speech at the Nineteenth Century Club, New York City, 20 November 1900 The cross of the Legion of…
| 227 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article Finn

From Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
A celebrated hero of Irish mythology, known also as Finn mac Cool (Fionn Mac Cumhail) or, in Scotland, as fingal . He may have originated as an aspect of the god Lugh, and folklore credits him with being a giant and building the giant's causeway . The Fenian or Ossianic Cycle tells the stories of…
| 169 words
Key concepts:
American writer. See also anonymous 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. by order of the author . The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) …
| 883 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article Twain, Mark

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
US writer. He established his reputation with the comic masterpiece The Innocents Abroad (1869) and two classic American novels, in dialect, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885). Twain's use of the vernacular (commonly spoken dialect), vivid…
| 447 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article Prince and the Pauper, The

From The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature
A novel by Mark *Twain (S. L. Clemens) published in 1882. Prince Edward, the future Edward VI of England, finds he has a double in the pauper boy Tom Canty. He and Tom exchange clothes for fun, but each is mistaken for the other and the prince is driven from the court, Tom being obliged to…
| 159 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article Clemens, Samuel L. (Mark Twain)

From The Great American History Fact-Finder
Humorist and author. A master of American literature, Clemens wrote in a colloquial, earthy style, inspired by the experiences of his childhood along the Mississippi River and his travels and lectures throughout the world. His humorous and satirical works present a realistic picture of…
| 188 words
Key concepts:
Mind Map

Stack overflow
More Library Resources