Adventures of HUCKLEBERRY FINN
by Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) (1835-1910)
with 174 Illustrations by E. W. Kemble (1861-1933)
and 13 illustrations by James Harley (no biographical info available)
First published 1885
The text of this book is in the public domain world-wide because the author died more than 100 years ago.
Mark Twain is most noted for his novels, “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” (1876), and its sequel, “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” the latter often called "the Great American Novel." Among dozens of titles, some of his works include “The Innocents Abroad,” “A Tramp Abroad,” “Roughing It,” “Life on the Mississippi,” “The Prince and the Pauper,” “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court,” and many more.
Huck fakes his own death to escape from his abusive drunken father, and shortly thereafter encounters the runaway slave Jim. The pair embark upon a journey to freedom, riding a raft down the Mississippi River, experiencing many adventures and encountering numerous colorful characters. The story is as many-layered as an onion; it may be read as simply a boy’s adventure story, but it is imbued with (sometimes subversive) humor, sizzles with satire, and might even be considered as an allegory.
“Huckleberry Finn” has been the center of controversy since its first publication, with some critics then and now decrying its coarse language, bad taste, and abhorrent lifestyle; bans then and now by some libraries and schools; and several sanitized versions which replace the infamous ubiquitous “N-word” with some Politically Correct term.
The book is noted for its colorful description of people and places along the Mississippi River. By satirizing Southern antebellum society that was already a quarter-century in the past by the time of publication, the book is an often scathing look at entrenched attitudes, particularly racism. The drifting journey of Huck and his friend Jim, a runaway slave, down the Mississippi River on their raft may be one of the most enduring images of escape and freedom in all of American literature.
—some of the above information adapted from Wikipedia
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EXCERPT:
Spoiler:
Some critics feel that the last several chapters were unnecessary, that they devolve into silliness and a softened unrealistic ending. Regardless of your feeling about the matter, the humor is undeniable. Here is an excerpt after the slave Jim has been captured. Tom Sawyer re-enters the story and wants to fit Jim up as a prisoner languishing in a dungeon, like those found in his beloved penny-dreadful adventure stories.
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IN THE MORNING we went up to the village and bought a wire rat-trap and fetched it down, and unstopped the best rat-hole, and in about an hour we had fifteen of the bulliest kind of ones; and then we took it and put it in a safe place under Aunt Sally’s bed. But while we was gone for spiders little Thomas Franklin Benjamin Jefferson Elexander Phelps found it there, and opened the door of it to see if the rats would come out, and they did; and Aunt Sally she come in, and when we got back she was a-standing on top of the bed raising Cain, and the rats was doing what they could to keep off the dull times for her. So she took and dusted us both with the hickry, and we was as much as two hours catching another fifteen or sixteen, drat that meddlesome cub, and they warn’t the likeliest, nuther, because the first haul was the pick of the flock. I never see a likelier lot of rats than what that first haul was.
We got a splendid stock of sorted spiders, and bugs, and frogs, and caterpillars, and one thing or another; and we like to got a hornet’s nest, but we didn’t. The family was at home. We didn’t give it right up, but stayed with them as long as we could; because we allowed we’d tire them out or they’d got to tire us out, and they done it. Then we got allycumpain and rubbed on the places, and was pretty near all right again, but couldn’t set down convenient. And so we went for the snakes, and grabbed a couple of dozen garters and house-snakes, and put them in a bag, and put it in our room, and by that time it was supper-time, and a rattling good honest day’s work: and hungry?—oh, no, I reckon not! And there warn’t a blessed snake up there when we went back—we didn’t half tie the sack, and they worked out somehow, and left. But it didn’t matter much, because they was still on the premises somewheres. So we judged we could get some of them again. No, there warn’t no real scarcity of snakes about the house for a considerable spell. You’d see them dripping from the rafters and places every now and then; and they generly landed in your plate, or down the back of your neck, and most of the time where you didn’t want them. Well, they was handsome and striped, and there warn’t no harm in a million of them; but that never made no difference to Aunt Sally; she despised snakes, be the breed what they might, and she couldn’t stand them no way you could fix it; and every time one of them flopped down on her, it didn’t make no difference what she was doing, she would just lay that work down and light out. I never see such a woman. And you could hear her whoop to Jericho. You couldn’t get her to take a-holt of one of them with the tongs. And if she turned over and found one in bed she would scramble out and lift a howl that you would think the house was afire. She disturbed the old man so that he said he could most wish there hadn’t ever been no snakes created. Why, after every last snake had been gone clear out of the house for as much as a week Aunt Sally warn’t over it yet; she warn’t near over it; when she was setting thinking about something you could touch her on the back of her neck with a feather and she would jump right out of her stockings. It was very curious. But Tom said all women was just so. He said they was made that way for some reason or other.
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Text based on the Project Gutenberg plain-text transcription; I formatted curly quotes, emdashes, and restored italics. 174 half-page illustrations; code borrowed from Jellby's edition of
"The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" to wrap the text around chapter-header images. (Thank you Jellby, you always seem to have solutions to my problems.) Embedded decorative font for titling and initial caps. No drop-caps.
Text-wrap and no-wrap versions, with cross-linked inline ToC for both.
BUT --- the chapter-head images-as-links in the text-wrap version don't work in my Sony reader or the Sony desktop reader software, but do work on Calibre reader and Adobe Digital Editions on the desktop --- do they work on other readers? Any feedback would be appreciated. In "text-wrap" version 2, links have been changed to the first word of each chapter.
Version 2 has additional 5000-word segment linked to Chapter 16.
Bonus package --- The zip contains three additional illustrations, also by E. W. Kemble: the full-page photogravures from the 1904 edition from Harper & Brothers Publishers.
This is not a “sanitized” version, you will encounter the “n-word”. That said, enjoy the read!
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EDIT: Uploaded version 2, with additional text and pictures, and error corrections. Previous downloads - [extra pics]46 / -- 80 / 90
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