In addition to the full text of the novel based on the first American edition, complete with a selection of the original illustrations by True Williams, this Broadview edition provides a wide range of appendices that place the novel in the context of 1840s rural America as well as 1870s literary America. These include materials on the composition and marketing of Tom Sawyer, selections from other “boy books” of the period, and historical documents relating to temperance, children’s literature, and schools.
Lucy Rollin is Professor Emeritus of English at Clemson University. She is the author of Twentieth Century Teen Culture by the Decades (Greenwood, 1999) and the editor of Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper (Oxford University Press, 1996).