The adventures of a boy and a runaway slave as they travel down the Mississippi River on a raft.
After river shipping was interrupted by the Civil War, Twain headed west with his brother Orion, who had been appointed secretary to the Nevada Territory. Settling in Carson City, he tried his luck at prospecting and wrote humorous pieces for a range of newspapers. Around this time he first began using the pseudonym Mark Twain, derived from a riverboat term. Relocating to San Francisco, he became a regular newspaper correspondent and a contributor to the literary magazine the Golden Era. He made a five-month journey to Hawaii in 1866 and the following year traveled to Europe to report on the first organized tourist cruise. The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and Other Sketches (1867) consolidated his growing reputation as humorist and lecturer.
After his marriage to Livy Langdon, Twain settled first in Buffalo, New York, and then for two decades in Hartford, Connecticut. His European sketches were expanded into The Innocents Abroad (1869), followed by Roughing It (1872), an account of his Western adventures; both were enormously successful. Twain's literary triumphs were offset by often ill-advised business dealings (he sank thousands of dollars, for instance, in a failed attempt to develop a new kind of typesetting machine, and thousands more into his own ultimately unsuccessful publishing house) and unrestrained spending that left him in frequent financial difficulty, a pattern that was to persist throughout his life.
Following The Gilded Age (1873), written in collaboration with Charles Dudley Warner, Twain began a literary exploration of his childhood memories of the Mississippi, resulting in a trio of masterpieces --The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Life on the Mississippi (1883), and finally The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), on which he had been working for nearly a decade. Another vein, of historical romance, found expression in The Prince and the Pauper (1882), the satirical A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889), and Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (1896), while he continued to draw on his travel experiences in A Tramp Abroad (1880) and Following the Equator (1897). His close associates in these years included William Dean Howells, Bret Harte, and George Washington Cable, as well as the dying Ulysses S. Grant, whom Twain encouraged to complete his memoirs, published by Twain's publishing company in 1885.
For most of the 1890s Twain lived in Europe, as his life took a darker turn with the death of his daughter Susy in 1896 and the worsening illness of his daughter Jean. The tone of Twain's writing also turned progressively more bitter. The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894), a detective story hinging on the consequences of slavery, was followed by powerful anti-imperialist and anticolonial statements such as 'To the Person Sitting in Darkness' (1901), 'The War Prayer' (1905), and 'King Leopold's Soliloquy' (1905), and by the pessimistic sketches collected in the privately published What Is Man? (1906). The unfinished novel The Mysterious Stranger was perhaps the most uncompromisingly dark of all Twain's later works. In his last years, his financial troubles finally resolved, Twain settled near Redding, Connecticut, and died in his mansion, Stormfield, on April 21, 1910.
Author biography courtesy of Random House, Inc.
Night_Novelist
Posted April 19, 2011
I think most of us would agree that we don't just buy these books to read but to add to a collection that we feel is worth our money. I currently have most of the leather bound books from the same series and I was excited to add another. However I was disappointed that the dimensions of this book and others in the single book collection aren't the same as the original leather bound books. Would it have been too hard to make it the same width and height as the previous books in the series? That's my only complaint otherwise it is still beautifully bound.
3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.I have many of the leatherbound classics that B&N puts out, and I love them. They are, however, all larger volumes of collected works of authors. I'm thrilled that they now have single titles, like Huck Finn and others, that I can add to my library. They're just as beautiful in their own right, and a quick glance at the pictures of the books shows that there is no illustration on the cover like some of the leatherbound author collections. I think this marks them as a different kind of book, because they are...and I'm assuming that if it had all the extras it would raise the price too much. I mean, they are LOVELY and great for collecting, but let's face it; the price is also what keeps us buying so many of them. I can't wait to get the others like Dracula, Wuthering Heights, and Pride & Prejudice.
3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.StevenLippard
Posted February 18, 2011
I just received my copy of Huck Finn. Im sadly disappointed. Ive read Huck before and am a big fan of Mark Twain, I know the story itself is fine, my problem is with the book itself.
I have 10 other books in the leatherbound classics collection and couldnt be happier with them. Although this book is advertised as part of the collection its form is marginal at best. It is smaller in demension and lacking the gold page edging. Also lacking are the cover illustrations. A fine book in and of itself, simply not worthy of this otherwise fine collection.
2 out of 5 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.I admit, I do not actually own this particular copy of Huck Finn (although next pay check I'm getting, I am!) However, I do own several of the books that have come out this year. Yes, the dimensions are a wee bit smaller. Yes, there is no fancy trimming. But this really shouldn't stop you from getting them. They are just as beautiful! And they still work well into the collection. The books maybe smaller (although no smaller than most hardcovers) but I think they are a little more heavy-duty, with the pages being thicker. And as another reviewer said, the older editions were, more or less, a collection of stories - whereas these are single novels.
Maybe I'm just not picky when it comes to books, but I thought these new ones were still very nice - they were classic looking.
As for the story itself, Huck Finn is a good book and a very good present to give to somebody special!
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted May 29, 2012
This is a beautiful book. I would disagree with the other poster who was disappointed that the cover is not illustrated or the edges gold. One thing I like about the leatherbound collection is that each cover is designed by someone who seems to also love the story of what it encapsulates. It seems fitting to me that the story of Huckleberry Finn, a poor boy living by his wits, does not have ornate gold edging. The style of the cover also speaks to me of the time period, very old west, which is when Mark Twain lived and wrote about. I thought the design was very well thought out and appropriate for the novel and collection. I don't think they all have to match in style or size, because the stories certainly speak of their uniqueness, so should the cover designs.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted March 9, 2011
No text was provided for this review.
Anonymous
Posted March 16, 2011
No text was provided for this review.
Anonymous
Posted April 29, 2011
No text was provided for this review.
Overview