The Adventures of Tom Sawyer / Tom Sawyer Abroad / Tom Sawyer, Detective

by Mark Twain, John C. Gerber (Editor), Paul Baender (Editor)

This is a small sampling of Mark Twain's life-long fulminations against the editors, printers, and proofreaders who, subtly or grossly, altered his work and shrouded his intentions as they transmitted his writing from manuscript to type. Through unauthorized changes and inadvertent errors, Mark Twain's first publishers brought out texts full of thousands of errors in form and content. Later publishers then based their reprints on these corrupt editions and added errors of their own. It is the aim of the Iowa-California edition to strip away this accretion of error and present texts faithful to the author's intention. By comparing all the life-time version of Mark Twain's works, the editors are able to isolate the author's revisions from the printers and publishers' changes. The record of this comparison supplies not only the evidence for editorial decisions, but also the history of the author's efforts to shape his work. In addition, these volumes include previously uncollected work, work that has long been out of print, and such unpublished writing as related drafts, working notes, and marginalia. The texts are established at the Center for Textual Studies at the University of Iowa or at the Mark Twain Papers in The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley. The costs for editorial work have been met by generous support from the Editing Program of the National Endowment for the Humanities, an independent federal agency, and other institutional and private donors. The edition is published by the University of California Press with financial assistance from the Graduate College at the University of Iowa. All volumes are submitted to the Center for Editions of american Authors, or to its successor, the Committee for Scholarly Editions, for examination and approval

Genres: Fiction

736 pages, Hardcover

Published April 8, 1980

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist and essayist. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced," with William Faulkner calling him "the father of American literature." His novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), with the latter often called the "Great American Novel." Twain also wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) and Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894), and co-wrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) with Charles Dudley Warner.

Reviews

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a three book series. The first book, "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" is the story I remember from childhood. It revolves around Tom's boyish antics with his side-kick, Huck, looking for buried treasures and plotting everywhich way to skip school and any kind of work. Yet we get to see the soft side of him as he romances his special girl and helps anyone in need.
The second book is "Tom Sawyer Abroad" and this story took on a different perspective, as it is told in the eyes and the words of Huckleberry Finn himself. Huck being an uneducated and homeless orphan sheds a whole new light on their adventures travelling in a hot air balloon. As Tom tries to teach Huck and Jim some geography, physics, math, and common sense, debates would arise and as Huck explains: "But reckoning don't settle nothing. You can reckon till the cows come home, but that don't fetch you to no decision. So we give it up and let it drop."
The third book is "Tom Sawyer, Detective". Once again the story is told by Huck and you really get to know the admiration that he had for Tom. "Why, I had eyes and I could see things, but they never meant nothing to me. But Tom Sawyer was different. When Tom Sawyer seen a thing it just got up on its hind legs and talked to him - told him everything it knowed. I never see such a head."

[Emily Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

The adventures of Tom Sawyer was a pretty good book; Kind of gave an Anne of green gables vibe, but with an American boy in place of a Canadian girl (also no where near as good...but w/e)
While the first book was completely believable, Tom Sawyer Abroad was an entirely separate genre. It was incredibly ridiculous and while in other books I would've enjoyed it's outrageousness, I found it so out of place I couldn't enjoy it. I'm just going to go ahead and say it was all made up to make Tom look more worldly than that postman; That seems WAY more believable.
And finally, Tom Sawyer Detective was by far the most interesting of the three books. I'm a fan of mysteries and detective stories, so this was a treat ! And I was actually surprised by the conclusion !

I liked two out of three, so four stars it gets.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm still amazed that I hadn't read Tom Sawyer before. It's a great book.

I also enjoyed Tom Sawyer Explorer - a much shorter tale. I was confused by the term Erronort which I initially misread as errornot. But I think it was Tom's way of spelling Aeronaut.

Third was essentially a shirt story, Tom Sawyer Detective. It was gloomier than the other two pieces. I did miss one switcheroo involving the twins, but I didn't have any trouble figuring out that Uncle Silas was no murderer.

On our bookcase with the rest of the Mark Twain set of books.

[A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Back in the day, when kids actually read, books like this helped shape my imagination.

[Alex Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

I suppose to some degree, Twain captures the American boyhood in a way that was uncaptured before. He expresses a part of life that was not deemed to be of interest. In this, Twain comes to elegantly encapsulate what makes America America. With all that is told, much of this is as trite as you'd expect, although Twain is able to say something through the innocence of the characters about human beings, human nature and respect for the other, even with the classism and racism as we would understand it now.

In many ways the characters are cartoony without meaning to be. Twain's writing is well paced but it also has the particular twists of quality you'd expect from him, where he is too clever with the plot, too clever with the characters. I suppose our tastes are out of alignment with his.

[Shari Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely love The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. These are things that I would love to have done as a child, but only came close to a shadow of his adventures. Twain is enchanting here. Tom Sawer Abroad I didn't care for nearly as much, but Detective is dangerous and fun. Tom to the rescue! When reading these incredible stories from Twain, one needs to keep in mind WHEN they were written and WHEN they were written about. Politically correct for the time, the language is sometimes offensive to a modern reader...but that needs to be set aside and forgiven. Just enjoy them!

[Arun Acharya · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wanted to read a light book after reading Jack Noble series. Tom Sawyer is always a friend when you are tense. I thought it will take time to finish the book but it hardly took four hours and since I did not have any other task at hand, I finished it in one sitting. The language used is actually the narration of Huckleberry Finn so you will find some confusing words. Such as "diseased" instead of "deceased". At first I thought it was typo but then I figured out Huckleberry Finn being the narrator, the mistakes are not really mistakes. Overall, an interesting read.

[Katy M · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tom Sawyer, Detective was much better than Tom Sawyer Abroad. Tom Sawyer Abroad didn't make any sense, and I think it could have largely been saved by the sentence, "and then I woke up from my dream" at the end

Tom Sawyer, Detective was very Hardy Boys-esque. While also not overly realistic, it was a fun read, even if the ending wasn't exactly gasp-worthy. I'm assuming the target audience for these books was much younger than me, and for that age group, and especially at a time where there was much less tecnology, I'm sure they were absolutely delightful.