The Adventures of Tom Sawyer — The Companion Edition

"Tom!"

No answer. With that call across a summer morning in St. Petersburg, Missouri, Mark Twain opens the most beloved boy's book in American literature — the whitewashed fence, the graveyard at midnight, the runaway pirates of Jackson's Island, the trial, the treasure, and the cave. It is a hymn to boyhood, exactly as Twain's Preface promises — but read it again as an adult and it is something more: a murder story, a courtroom story, and a clear-eyed portrait of a river town, all carried on the funniest narrative voice America had yet produced.

This is the complete first American edition text (American Publishing Company, Hartford, 1876) — the edition Twain's own publisher issued — taken from Project Gutenberg #74 and cross-checked against a scan of the 1876 Hartford printing itself. (The book was published in England a few months earlier, in June 1876; this edition follows the American text throughout, and its Note on This Edition explains the witnesses honestly.) Where the Gutenberg transmission modernizes the first edition's spellings, this edition restores the 1876 readings — Welchman, school-house, to-day and their fellows, 41 restorations in all. The text is otherwise exactly as published in 1876, period language included, unaltered; the editor's note on the period stands at the front of the book.

The 1876 edition was illustrated by True W. Williams, and this edition restores his pictures from the first-edition scan at their original positions: 140 of the 159 in-text illustrations named in the first edition's own list, plus the frontispiece portrait of Tom — the fence, the graveyard, the court room, McDougal's Cave, and the captioned chapter-opening portraits (Jim, Becky Thatcher, Muff Potter, the Welchman, Huck transformed) — 142 illustrations in all, including one, Sid, that Gutenberg's list carries and the 1876 printed list omits. The nineteen pieces that could not be restored cleanly from this copy are named in the Note on This Edition — omitted, never faked.

Inside this edition:

• The complete, unabridged 1876 novel — Preface, all 35 chapters, and the Conclusion (69,905 words in all)

• A new introduction — Twain in Hartford, and the book as a hymn to boyhood written for adults too

• Who's Who — Tom, Huck, Becky Thatcher, Aunt Polly, Sid, Muff Potter, Injun Joe, Joe Harper, the Widow Douglas, and Mr. Dobbins

• Four explainers: St. Petersburg is Hannibal, Missouri · Mississippi river-town life in the 1840s · superstition and folk belief in the book · the schoolroom and Sunday-school world

• A short life of Mark Twain

• A respectful, factual note on the period — the book's period language and attitudes, text unaltered

• A reading schedule in three stretches — and discussion questions for six chapter groups, spoiler-fenced at the graveyard, the trial, and the cave, plus a whole-book set

• An appendix, "The Text and the Pictures" — the witnesses, the 41 restorations, and the full illustration record

The novel's text is public domain worldwide (Mark Twain died in 1910), and Williams's illustrations are likewise public domain. All companion material is original to this edition. This is an independent publication, not affiliated with any film, stage adaptation, or other edition — and no adaptation's Tom appears in these pages.

Formats: EPUB eBook ($9.99, this listing). The printable Book Club Kit for this edition is available in this store.