Henry Nash Smith

This book considers first the problems of style and structure Mark Twain faced at the outset of his career, and then traces his handling of these problems in nine of his principal works. Since questions of technique necessarily involve questions of meaning, I have dealt also with his ethical ideas. The inquiry leads ultimately to the consideration of how his writing reveals a conflict between the dominant culture of his day and an emergent attitude...

Classics. Mark Twain's tale of a boy's picaresque journey down the Mississippi on a raft conveyed the voice and experience of the American frontier as no other work had done before. When Huck escapes from his drunken father and the 'sivilizing' Widow Douglas with the runaway slave Jim, he embarks on a series of adventures that draw him to feuding families and the trickery of the unscrupulous 'Duke' and 'Dauphin'. Beneath the exploits, however, are...