Huck Finn in Its Times I

    The links here will take you to the website "Mark Twain in His Times," which I've been working on for too long. For Monday's class I'd like you to look at these three sections of the archive. I've emphasized the materials I'd "especially" like you to read/view, and if that's all you have time for, that's fine.

  • Advertising & Promoting Huck
    Especially Poster, Blurb, Magazine Prepublication, and the contemporary stories about the novel Being Banned in Concord.


  • Selling Huck Door-to-Door
    Especially: take one of the fifteen page tours. If you want to know more about Subscription Publication as a 19th century phenomenon, and a fact of MT's career, follow the link there to Marketing Twain. And check out Uncle Silas...


  • Contemporary Reviews
    I hope you can read all these, and think "especially" about the difference between the way the novel was talked about in 1885 and is talked about in our academic environment.


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    Huck Finn in Its Times II

        For Wednesday's class I hope we can focus specifically on race, which is what I'd like you to be thinking about as you use the material under these links:

  • Illustrations
    If you have the U.Cal. edition with Kemble's original illustrations, you don't need to look at them here, but I would like everyone to read the essay Kemble wrote called "Illustrating Huckleberry Finn" that you'll see a link for.


  • Touring with Huck
    Like a rock musician, one of the ways MT tried to promote his new novel was to go on a lecture tour across America in the winter 1884-1885. There's a lot of stuff to note about the way America received him on the tour, but the one thing I'd like you to especially look at is under the link called "Freeing Jim and the Freedman's Case." (You don't have to read the essay called "The Freedman's Case in Equity" -- it's long -- but if you have time, it's really interesting.


  • Re-Presenting Jim
    There's a lot here too, but I hope you'll have time to look at it all -- how Huck "sees Jim" is a problematic issue in the novel; how America has seen Jim is just as complex a problem...
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