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Cover of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Language: English (US)

A boy in a sleepy Mississippi river town talks his way out of chores, runs off to play at pirates, and then finds himself the only witness, with his friend Huckleberry Finn, to a murder in the graveyard. Episodes of small-town boyhood give way to a genuinely dangerous plot and a search through a cave. Published in 1876, and written, Twain said, mainly to entertain boys and girls. Public domain in the EU (author died 1910). Source: Project Gutenberg.

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PREFACE

Most of the adventures recorded in this book really occurred; one or two were experiences of my own, the rest those of boys who were schoolmates of mine. Huck Finn is drawn from life; Tom Sawyer also, but not from an individual—he is a combination of the characteristics of three boys whom I knew, and therefore belongs to the composite order of architecture.

The odd superstitions touched upon were all prevalent among children and slaves in the West at the period of this story—that is to say, thirty or forty years ago.

Although my book is intended mainly for the entertainment of boys and girls, I hope it will not be shunned by men and women on that account, for part of my plan has been to try to pleasantly remind adults of what they once were themselves, and of how they felt and thought and talked, and what queer enterprises they sometimes engaged in.

THE AUTHOR.

HARTFORD, 1876.

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