"The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" by Mark Twain (1876)

The famous tale of growing up in grassroots America in the first part of the 19th Century, with two of the best-known characters in the whole of American fiction, the resourceful and imaginative Tom Sawyer and his adventurous, semi-wild bosom friend Huckleberry Finn.

An American classic (although first published in England!) it was really intended for young people by its structure (anecdotes loosely linked together), its content matter (youthful escapades and high-jinks) and its style (dialogue-intensive, heavily laced with rural forms of speech and local superstitions), but it veers towards darker, wider concerns when murder and lynching and, to some extent, race relations enter the picture as the narrative builds up pace and the writing becomes more descriptive.

With its charm and formidable humour and its almost magical way of recreating the atmosphere of life in the halcyon days of America’s youth before the Civil War on the banks of the Mississippi river, this very special book by a very gifted author has a universal appeal that has superbly passed the test of time [1] to become a classic for not only young people of both sexes but all those who were young once too.

With all of the 161 (!) very expressive illustrations of the first American edition in late 1876 by Trueman W. Williams.

An e-book is available for downloading below.

CHAPTERS 1-15

CHAPTERS 15-35

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (e-book)