Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: The NewSouth Edition

by Alan Gribben (Editor), Alan Gribben (Introduction)

Overview

In a radical departure from standard editions, Mark Twain’s most famous novel is published here with one disturbing racial label translated as “slave.” In seeking to record accurately the speech of uneducated boys and adults along the Mississippi River in the 1840s, Twain casually included an epithet that is diminishing the potential audience for his masterpiece. While dozens of other editions preserve the inflammatory slur that the author employed for the sake of realism, the NewSouth Edition proves that the main point of Twain’s masterpiece—the immense harm deriving from inhumane social conformity—comes through just as vibrantly without obliging readers to confront hundreds of insulting racial pejoratives. The editor’s Introduction supplies the historical and literary context for Twain’s groundbreaking book, along with a helpful guide to his satirical targets.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781603062367
Publisher:	NewSouth Books
Publication date:	10/01/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	875 KB

About the Author

DR. ALAN GRIBBEN co-founded the Mark Twain Circle of America, compiled Mark Twain’s Library: A Reconstruction, and recently co-edited Mark Twain on the Move: A Travel Reader. Gribben has written numerous essays about Mark Twain’s life and image. He teaches on the English faculty of Auburn University at Montgomery and edits the Mark Twain Journal.
Fifty years of research and travel resulted in ALAN GRIBBEN’s two-volume Mark Twain’s Literary Resources: A Reconstruction of His Library and Reading. Gribben was the editor of the Mark Twain Journal: The Author and His Era and for fifteen years he reviewed books and articles about Mark Twain for American Literary Scholarship, An Annual. His NewSouth editions of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn offered altered versions of the texts, which omitted racial slurs. He also coedited Mark Twain on the Move: A Travel Reader. Gribben’s Harry Huntt Ransom: Intellect in Motion was the first biography about the eminent library founder at the University of Texas at Austin. Forty-five years as an English professor concluded with Gribben’s retirement from the classroom in 2019.