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Tom Sawyer lives with his Aunt Polly in St Petersburg, a sleepy town on the Mississippi, and hates school, Sunday school and anything that interferes with…
Tom Sawyer lives with his Aunt Polly in St Petersburg, a sleepy town on the Mississippi, and hates school, Sunday school and anything that interferes with fun. He tricks his friends into paying him for the privilege of whitewashing a fence, falls in love with Becky Thatcher, and runs away with his friends to play pirates on an island, returning in time to attend his own funeral. But one midnight in the graveyard, he and Huckleberry Finn watch Injun Joe commit a murder and pin it on the drunken Muff Potter, and Tom must decide whether to speak, before an adventure in a cave that nearly kills him and Becky.
Context and significance
Mark Twain published the book in 1876, drawing on his own boyhood in Hannibal, Missouri. He wrote in the preface that it was meant for boys and girls but hoped adults would not shun it, and it is still a delight for both. The story continues, in Huck's own voice, in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
About the author
Samuel Clemens (1835–1910) grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, on the banks of the Mississippi, and worked as a printer's apprentice, a steamboat pilot, a silver prospector in Nevada and a newspaper reporter before he became Mark Twain. A comic story about a jumping frog made his name in 1865, and his lectures and travel books made him the most famous American writer of his time.