The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is a humorous and nostalgic book depicting the carefree days of boyhood in a small Midwestern town. The characters are based on Twains schoolmates, and the town is Hannibal, Missouri, the setting where he grew up.
Just what did boys do in a small town during the mid-1800s, a time when there were no televisions, no arcades, and no videos? They whitewashed fences, floated down rivers, traded marbles, formed secret societies, smoked pipes, and, on occasion, managed to attend their own funerals. Yes, they may have been a bit mischievous, but as Aunt Polly said of Tom when she believed him to be dead, He was the best-hearted boy that ever was. Aunt Pollys sentiments reveal one of Mark Twains cardinal philosophies: In this deceitful and infirm world, innocence can be found only in the heart of a boy.


Mark Twain, pseudonym of Samuel L. Clemens (1835-1910), was born in Florida, Missouri. A printer first and then a Mississippi riverboat pilot, he adopted his pen name from riverboat lingo meaning water two fathoms deep. His masterpieces, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), are not only classic humorous writing but also a graphic picture of nineteenth-century America.