The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Complete

Synopsis

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is a novel by Mark Twain, published in 1876. It is set around the 1830s and 1840s in St. Petersburg, an imaginary town on the Mississippi modelled on Hannibal, Missouri, where Twain spent his boyhood. Tom is a mischievous, quick-witted orphan who lives with his Aunt Polly and his half-brother Sid, and who would rather go swimming than go to school. Punished with whitewashing a fence, he persuades the other boys that it is a privilege and has them pay for the chance. He falls for Becky Thatcher, the new girl in town, and runs wild with Huckleberry Finn, a vagrant boy whose freedom all the others envy. One night in the graveyard, the two friends witness something they were never meant to see. With humour and nostalgia, Twain recreates boyhood and the life of a small town beside the great river.