The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Front piece of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, 1876, 1st edition
AuthorMark Twain
LanguageEnglish
GenreBildungsroman, picaresque novel, satire, folk, children's literature
PublisherAmerican Publishing Company
Publication date
June 9, 1876[1]
Publication placeUnited States
OCLC47052486
813.4
LC ClassPZ7.T88 Ad 2001
Followed byAdventures of Huckleberry Finn 
TextThe Adventures of Tom Sawyer at Wikisource

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (also simply known as Tom Sawyer) is a picaresque novel by Mark Twain published on 9 June 1876 about a boy, Tom Sawyer, growing up along the Mississippi River. It is set in the 1840s in the town of St. Petersburg, which is based on Hannibal, Missouri, where Twain lived as a boy.[2] In the novel, Sawyer has several adventures, often with his friend Huckleberry Finn. Originally a commercial failure, the book ended up being the best-selling of Twain's works during his lifetime.[3][4] Though overshadowed by its 1885 sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the book is considered by many to be a masterpiece of American literature.[5] It is alleged by Mark Twain to be one of the first novels to be written on a typewriter.[6]

  1. ^ Facsimile of the original 1st edition.
  2. ^ "American Literature: Mark Twain". www.americanliterature.com. Retrieved 29 January 2015.
  3. ^ Railton, Stephen. "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer". Mark Twain in His Times. University of Virginia. Retrieved 2 April 2018.
  4. ^ Messent, Peter (2007). The Cambridge Introduction to Mark Twain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781139462273. Retrieved 2 April 2018.
  5. ^ "United States History: Mark Twain". Retrieved 28 February 2019.
  6. ^ Paine, Albert Bigelow. Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Retrieved 27 December 2023.