Mark Twain
1835–1910 · United States
“All right, then, I'll go to hell.”
Peak-work percentile in the canon.
The lineage through Mark Twain
Drew From(2)
who shaped Mark Twain
via Don Quixote
- Behind Tom and Huck stands Quixote and Sancho — Twain lifts Cervantes' pairing of the deluded romantic and his clear-eyed foil
- Tom's elaborate make-believe is pure Quixote: the enchantment device, the insistence that reality conform to the books he's read, with Huck playing the unimpressed Sancho
- Huckleberry Finn is Cervantes' picaresque illusion-versus-reality structure carried down an American river — reading Don Quixote first shows you the mold it was poured in
- Huck picks this very book up in the Grangerfords' parlor (Chapter 17) and pronounces it "interesting, but tough"
- Twain put it there on purpose — he owned Bunyan and even called an earlier book The New Pilgrim's Progress — using the pious classic to mock a feuding family that brings rifles to the pew
- Read Bunyan first and the joke sharpens: the model of the righteous journey, propped up in a house that has lost the thread
Famous Quotes
“You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter.”
“But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can't stand it. I been there before.”
“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.”
“He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it—namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain.”
About Mark Twain
American writer, humorist, and lecturer (born Samuel Clemens), often called the father of American literature. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn — praised by Hemingway as the source of all modern American fiction — combines vernacular humor with devastating social criticism. His wit, irreverence, and moral clarity made him America's most beloved literary voice.
Mark Twain, Ranked
According to 
- 64The Adventures of Tom Sawyer1876Mark TwainBreezy·Long·282 pagesInfluence48Popularity89Late 19th-Century AmericanAdventureEnglish
- 110The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn1884Mark TwainBreezy·Long·443 pagesInfluence48Popularity96Late 19th-Century AmericanAdventureEnglish
- 64The Adventures of Tom SawyerMark Twain1876Late 19th-Century AmericanBreezyLong2824889AdventureEnglish
- 110The Adventures of Huckleberry FinnMark Twain1884Late 19th-Century AmericanBreezyLong4434896AdventureEnglish