'Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don't. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft'

Mark Twain's tale of a boy's picaresque journey down the Mississippi on a raft conveyed the voice and experience of the American frontier as no other work had done before. When Huck escapes from his drunken father and the 'sivilizing' Widow Douglas with the runaway slave Jim, he embarks on a series of adventures that draw him to feud- ing families and the trickery of the unscrupulous 'Duke' and 'Dauphin'. Beneath the exploits, however, are more serious undercurrents of slavery, adult control and, above all, of Huck's struggle between his instinctive goodness and the corrupt values of society, which threaten his deep and enduring friendship with Jim.

This edition uses the text from the first edition of 1884 and includes a new chronology and suggestions for further reading.

'All modern American literature comes from... Huckleberry Finn. It's the best book we've had' ERNEST HEMINGWAY