Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)This is the kind of book reserved for the word "volume" and by that I mean it carries all the weight of Twain's most accessible works. All of the Library of America books carry this weight but this was one of the first and deservedly so. I'm reviewing this book not just on its contents but on its sheer style and scholarly editing, its fitness in the hand (or lap), the way it will look on your bookshelf and the 10-point Linotron Galliard printing that makes the very act of reading much easier.
Now, the contents cannot be less magnificent as the river all these writings have in common. Funny, wise and as much a part of 19th century American history as you'll find anywhere, these are great examples of the best American writing in one "volume" by one of the world's most recognized authors. No self-respecting booklover should be without it.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Mark Twain : Mississippi Writings : Tom Sawyer, Life on the Mississippi, Huckleberry Finn, Pudd'nhead Wilson (Library of America)
Here for the first time in one volume are the most famous and characteristic of Mark Twain's works. Through each of them runs the powerful and majestic Mississippi. The river represented for Twain the complex and contradictory possibilities in his own and the nation's life: the place where civilization's comforts meet the violence and promise of freedom of the frontier. It was the place, too, where Twain's youthful innocence confronted the grim reality of slavery. The nostalgic re-creation of childhood in "Tom Sawyer"--"simply a hymn put into prose form to give it a worldly air," said Twain--and the richly anecdotal memoir of his days as a riverboat pilot in "Life on the Mississippi" give way to the realism and often dark comedy of "Huckleberry Finn" and the troubled exploration of slavery in his mystery, "Pudd'nhead Wilson." Together, these four books trace the central trajectory of his life and career, and they can be read as a single masterpiece.
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