Before moving into the home, the family spent the summer in
Livy's hometown of Elmira, New York, where Twain began working
in earnest on The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. He had actually
begun the book during the winter of 1872-73, in Hartford, but
had put it aside to work on The Gilded Age. Now, in Elmira from
April to September 1874, he was able to work almost daily on the
project. Soon the writing became forced and artificial. "I had
worked myself out, pumped myself dry," he wrote a friend. So he
put the manuscript aside and wrote a series of articles on his
steamboating days, "Old Times on the Mississippi." It wasn't
until eight months later that he returned to Tom Sawyer.
When the book was finally published in December 1876, the
reviews were favorable. Sales, however, were another matter. A
Canadian publisher undercut the U.S. edition by flooding the
country with a cheap pirated version. Twain's own publisher
sold fewer than 27,000 copies of the novel during the first
year. Oddly, sales of Tom Sawyer never really took off until
after 1885, when The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn appeared and
reviewers began to link the two books in the public's mind.
Since then, Americans have bought millions of copies of the
novel. It is a favorite of both children and adults--a
testament to Twain's genius for enriching his tales of childhood
with humor and penetrating insights into human nature.
Most readers agree that Tom Sawyer is Twain's second-best
book. First-place honors must go to Huckleberry Finn, where
Twain explores both language and ideas in greater depth.
However, Tom Sawyer is probably Twain's best-loved novel, and
its extraordinary success with people of all ages seems to prove
it.
To understand Tom Sawyer, it may help to put yourself in
Twain's place--that of a worldly man, nearing forty, who is
viewing childhood across the bridge of thirty years. Between
Twain and his boyhood stand years of personal travel, trial, and
error; a civil war marked with heroism and sacrifice but also
greed and cruelty; an end to slavery; and startling developments
in industry and communications. From the vantage point of the
post Civil War era, the 1840s must have seemed idyllic
indeed--as carefree and innocent as an endless summer.
Primarily, Tom Sawyer is a reminiscence of Twain's boyhood,
which he recalls with a longing for the past. But it is more
than a remembrance because Twain has let his broad literary
background shape his memories.
Literary sources for Tom Sawyer include Charles Dickens' A
Tale of Two Cities, which contains a grave-robbing scene like
the one Tom and Huck witness. The treasure hunt contains
