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| The Adventures of Tom Sawyer | |
 Frontispiece of 1st edition |
|
| Author | Mark Twain |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | True Williams |
| Cover artist | created by Mark Twain |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Bildungsroman, Picaresque, Satire, Folk, Children's Novel |
| Publisher | American Publishing Company |
| Publication date | 1876 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 275pp |
| ISBN | NA |
| Followed by | Adventures of Huckleberry Finn |
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain, is a popular 1876 novel about a young boy growing up in the antebellum South on the Mississippi River in the fictional town of St. Petersburg, Missouri.
Contents |
Plot summary
Tom Sawyer, a mischievous orphan taken in by his Aunt Polly, goes through a series of adventures involving his friends, Joe Harper and Huckleberry Finn. Tom is a mischevious mastermind, and a professional trickster. He escapes punishment many times by his tricks and charms. Though he is often foolish and unpredictable, he also is somewhat smart and has a good sense of humor. When not trying to win his sweetheart, Becky Thatcher, Tom is either getting into mischief or going on an adventure. Many times, Tom suddenly changes from his grinning self into a fearsome pirate or anything else he can think of. His laugh changes into a bloodcurdling yell or a barking captain's voice. Tom Sawyer's main doings are racing bugs, impressing girls with fights and stunts in the schoolyard, getting lost in a cave, and playing pirates on the Mississippi River. The best known passage in the book describes how Sawyer persuades his friends to whitewash, or paint, a long fence for him.
Characters
See List of characters in the Tom Sawyer series.
Literary significance and reception
The sales of Tom Sawyer were lukewarm at first. It initially sold less than a third as many copies as Twain's Innocents Abroad. By the time of Mark Twain's death, however, Tom Sawyer was both an American classic and a bestseller. It is arguably the work for which Twain is best known today.
Tom Sawyer also appears in three other Mark Twain books:
Of these, Huckleberry Finn, in which Tom Sawyer is only a minor character, is considered by many to have the most literary merit.
Publication History
The first publication of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was by Chatto and Windus in England and came six months prior to the U.S. publication. Initial publication in England was often used by Twain, since otherwise it was impossible to obtain a copyright in the British Commonwealth. In the case of Tom Sawyer, the delay between the London and U.S. editions extended much beyond what Twain envisioned, or desired. This led to widespread piracy of the work and, Twain believed, a significant loss of royalties.
When the work did appear in the U.S., it was sold by subscription only. In this distribution method, book agents across the country took orders for the book prior to publication and then delivered the book when available. It was only with subsequent editions that the book became available at retail shops.
Film adaptations
The story of Tom Sawyer has been filmed or animated multiple times since its initial publication. Some of the film adaptations of Twain's novel include:
- A 1907 silent version released by the Paramount studio
- A 1917 silent version directed by William Desmond Taylor, starring Jack Pickford as Tom
- A 1930 version directed by John Cromwell, starring Jackie Coogan as Tom
- In 1938 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was filmed in Technicolor by the Selznick Studio. It starred Tommy Kelly as Tom and was directed by Norman Taurog. Most notable was the cave sequence designed by William Cameron Menzies.
- A 1947 Soviet Union version, directed by Lazar Frenkel and Gleb Zatvornitsky
- A 1968 French/German made-for-television miniseries, directed by Wolfgang Liebeneiner, starring Roland Demongeot as Tom and Marc Di Napoli as Huck
- A 1973 musical version with songs by Richard and Robert Sherman, starring Johnny Whitaker as Tom and a young Jodie Foster as Becky Thatcher. There was also a TV movie version released that same year which starred Buddy Ebsen as Muff Potter.
- Tom Sawyer no Boken (1980), a Japanese anime TV series by Nippon Animation, part of the World Masterpiece Theater; aired in the United States on HBO
- A 1984 Canadian claymation version produced by Hal Roach studios
- Tom and Huck (1995), starring Jonathan Taylor Thomas as Tom and Brad Renfro as Huck Finn
- A 1995 episode for the PBS Wishbone TV series.
- A 2000 animated adaptation, featuring the characters as anthropomorphic animals with an all-star voice cast, including country singers Rhett Akins (as Tom), Mark Wills (as Huck Finn), Lee Ann Womack, Waylon Jennings and Hank Williams Jr. as well as Betty White as Aunt Polly
Trivia
In dictations for his autobiography, Twain claimed Tom Sawyer "must have been" the first book whose manuscript was typed on a typewriter. However, typewriter historian Darryl Rehr has concluded that Twain's first typed manuscript was Life on the Mississippi.[1]
References
External links
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Free eBook in PDF format.
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer with embedded audio (PDF available)
- Free audio book at LibriVox
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 29 August 2008, at 10:50.
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