The book was to be sold by subscription. Publication was postponed, but not for lack of subscriptions. The culprit was never discovered, although Webster immediately offered a reward of five hundred dollars to anyone who could name—and prove the guilt of—the man who did it.
Had the mistake not been discovered, Mr. The first American edition appeared on February 18, The word the was added by the publishers to the running heads and by Kemble in his illustrations. Sales were good. He planned to print 50, It is, of course, impossible that so great a novel should have been misconstrued by everyone.
And yet what held his increasingly bitter attention—almost from the moment the book appeared—was the controversy into which it was born. In March of there occurred one of the great ironies of our literary history; Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was banned by a committee of the Public Library in Concord, Massachusetts, the town of Emerson and Thoreau, which had been the brightest center of intellect the country had ever known.
The committee found the book too crude and had it removed from the public bookshelves. Clemens cannot think of something better to tell our pure-minded lads and lasses he had best stop writing for them.
Twain thus was probably the first American writer to gain advantage by being banned in or around Boston. That will sell 25, copies for us sure. No other book of mine has sold so many copies within 2 months after issue as this one has done. The first objections to Huck arose merely from notions of gentility: literature was to be high-toned and elevating.
Even Emerson, who had noted again and again that ordinary speech had its own power and poetry, thought it necessary to keep it out of his printed Essays. It is the best rhetoric and for a hundred occasions these forbidden words are the only good ones.
Some Americans did not view Huck as a positive role model for young readers. Immediately after publication, the book was banned on the recommendation of public commissioners in Concord, Massachusetts, who described it as racist, coarse, trashy, inelegant, irreligious, obsolete, inaccurate, and mindless.
Indeed, the book became a bestseller. By it had sold 10 million copies; more than forty different editions have been printed in the United States alone.
In general, the language is considered an accurate representation of that spoken by rural populations in the pre—Civil War South. Alleged racist content has been the reason most often cited for banning or challenging Huck Finn , particularly since and the rise of the civil rights movement in the United States. Since the s, the use of Huck Finn in schools and libraries has been challenged in a number of states. Twain supporters contend that the author was anything but racist and insist that the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was a satire in which Twain sought to highlight the hypocrisy of the society in which he grew up.
Defenders of the book also insist that Jim comes across as having more common sense and as being more talented than either Huck or his best friend, Tom Sawyer. In , Alan Gribben, a professor at Auburn University, published a version of the book that replaced that offending word with slave. Around the same time appeared The Hipster Huckleberry Finn , where the word was replaced with hipster. I wrote Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn for adults exclusively, and it always distresses me when I find that boys and girls have been allowed access to them.
The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean; I know this by my own experience, and to this day I cherish an unappeasable bitterness against the unfaithful guardians of my young life, who not only permitted but compelled me to read an unexpurgated Bible through before I was 15 years old. None can do that and ever draw a clean sweet breath again this side of the grave.
Ask that young lady—she will tell you so. Most honestly do I wish I could say a softening word or two in defense of Huck's character, since you wish it, but really in my opinion it is no better than those of Solomon, David, Satan, and the rest of the sacred brotherhood.
If there is an unexpurgated Bible in the Children's Department, won't you please help that young woman remove Huck and Tom from that questionable companionship?
Twain, who ran his own publishing firm, hired year-old E. Kemble to illustrate the first edition of Huckleberry Finn. Twain also made a number of poor investments and financial decisions and, in , found himself mired in debilitating debt. As his personal fortune dwindled, he continued to devote himself to writing. Drawing from his personal plight and the prevalent national troubles of the day, he finished a draft of Huckleberry Finn in , and by had it ready for publication.
The novel met with great public and critical acclaim. Twain continued to write over the next ten years. Personal tragedy also continued to hound Twain: his finances remained troublesome, and within the course of a few years, his wife and two of his daughters passed away.
Despite his personal troubles, however, Twain continued to enjoy immense esteem and fame and continued to be in demand as a public speaker until his death in The story of Huckleberry Finn, however, does not end with the death of its author. The novel occasionally has been banned in Southern states because of its steadfastly critical take on the South and the hypocrisies of slavery.
The fact that the historical context in which Twain wrote made his use of the word insignificant—and, indeed, part of the realism he wanted to create—offers little solace to some modern readers.
Ultimately , The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has proved significant not only as a novel that explores the racial and moral world of its time but also, through the controversies that continue to surround it, as an artifact of those same moral and racial tensions as they have evolved to the present day.
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