“I LOVE this book, as a reader, and I always enjoy teaching it. In the midst of current conversations and conflicts (Black Lives Matter and the responses to it, for example), its importance as a truly ‘American’ novel only grows.”—Anita Guynn, University of North Carolina at Pembroke

This Norton Critical Edition includes:

• The American first edition text, plus the reinstated “raft passage” from Life on the Mississippi (1883), complete with all original illustrations by Edward Windsor Kemble and, for the raft passage, John Harley.
• Editorial matter by Thomas Cooley.
• A rich selection of contextual and source documents centred on the novel’s historical background, language, composition and reception, four of them new to the Fourth Edition.
• Seventeen carefully chosen critical assessments of Mark Twain’s greatest work, ten of them new to the Fourth Edition.
• A chronology and a selected bibliography.
  

About the Series

Read by more than 12 million students over fifty-five years, Norton Critical Editions set the standard for apparatus that is right for undergraduate readers. The three-part format—annotated text, contexts and criticism—helps students to better understand, analyse and appreciate the literature, while opening a wide range of teaching possibilities for instructors. Whether in print or in digital format, Norton Critical Editions provide all the resources students need.