Larger	Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Norton Critical Edition) Author: Thomas Cooley (Editor), Mark Twain
	Book Information Publisher: W. W. Norton Company Book Type: Paperback Members Wishing: 2 Rating: 8 ISBN-13: 9780393966404 - ISBN-10: 0393966402 Publication Date: 12/19/1998 Pages: 402 Book Reviews

Cordially hated and dreaded by all the mothers of the town because he was idle, and lawless, vulgar, and bad -- and because all their children admired him so', Huckleberry Finn, the fourteen-year-old son of the town drunkard, joins runaway slave Jim on an exciting journey down the mighty Mississippi River on a raft.

This perennially popular Norton Critical Edition reprints for the first time the definitive Iowa-California text of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, complete with all original illustrations by Edward Windsor Kemble and John Harley.

The text is accompanied by explanatory annotations. Contexts and Sources provides readers with a rich selection of documents related to the historical background, language, composition, sale, reception, and newly discovered first half of the manuscript of Mark Twain's greatest work.

Included are letters on the writing of the novel, excerpts from the author's autobiography, samples of bad poetry that inspired his satire (including an effort by young Sam Clemens himself), a section on the censorship of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by schools and libraries over a hundred-year period, and commentary by David Carkeet on dialects of the book and by Earl F. Briden on its "racist" illustrations.

In addition, this section reprints the full texts of both "Sociable Jimmy," upon which is based the controversial theory that Huck speaks in a "black voice," and "A True Story, Repeated Word for Word As I Heard It," the first significant attempt by Mark Twain to capture the speech of an African American in print.

Criticism of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is divided into "Early Responses" (including the first negative review) and "Modern Views" by Victor A. Doyno, T. S. Eliot, Jane Smiley, David L. Smith, Shelley Fisher Fishkin (the "black voice" thesis), James R. Kincaid (a rebuttal of Fishkin), and David R. Sewell. Also included is Toni Morrison's moving personal "Introduction" to the troubling experience of reading and rereading Mark Twain's masterpiece.