Penguin Classics: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer' with an introduction by John Seelye

'Tom Sawyer' is Mark Twain's hymn to the secure and fantastic world of boyhood and adventure. From the famous episodes of the whitewahsed fence and the ordeal in the cave to trial of Injun Joe, the story is redolent of life in the Mississippi River towns in which Twain spent his own youth. A sombre undercurrent flows through the high humour and unabashed nostalgia of the novel, however, for beneath the innocence of childhood lie the inequities of adult reality - base emotions and superstitions, murder and revenge, starvation and slavery.