The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Running away seemed like a good idea at the time...

The Widow Douglas is doing her best to civilise Huckleberry Finn, but it just isn't working. Wearing clean clothes, going to school, and having a hot meal waiting for him when he gets home are becoming boring and tedious.

So, to make his life more interesting Huck, as he is normally called, decides to join Tom Sawyer's gang of outlaws. However, when they fail to be the vicious ransom specialists they claim to be, Huck decides to forget about excitement and tries to give his civilised life another go. He attends school and minds his own business... for a while.

After his father turns up out of the blue and starts causing trouble, Huck decides he's had enough of normal life and sets sail on his raft for a secluded island. When he arrives he finds he's not the only one who has decided to live there. On the island, he encounters thieves, a flood that provides a nice surprise, con men, violent shootouts, family feuds and much more.

After so much adventure, Huckleberry Finn ends up wishing he was back at home, tucked up in bed after a hot meal. But does this wish come true, or do his adventures continue?

Samuel Langhorne Clemans, known to most as Mark Twain, has been hailed by many as the father of American Literature. His two most famous works, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), are considered two of the greatest American novels of all time.

Twain was born in Florida, Missouri on 30th November 1835. He grew up in the town of Hannibal on the Mississippi River, which would eventually serve as the basis for the place where Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn would live.

Twain grew up in Missouri at a time when it was a slave state. After the American Civil War broke out, he became a strong supporter of emancipation, and staunchly believed that the slave trade should be abolished.

Though he began as a comic writer, the tribulations he faced in his personal life perhaps served to turn him into a serious, even pessimistic, writer in his later years. He lost his wife and two daughters, and his ill-fated life never really allowed him to recover. Twain passed away in 1910, but he is still one of the best-loved writers around the world.