The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Informationen zum Autor Mark Twain, born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in 1835, left school at age 12. His career encompassed such varied occupations as printer, Mississippi riverboat pilot, journalist, travel writer, and publisher, which furnished him with a wide knowledge of humanity and the perfect grasp of local customs and speech manifested in his writing. It wasn't until The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), that he was recognized by the literary establishment as one of the greatest writers America would ever produce. Toward the end of his life, plagued by personal tragedy and financial failure, Twain grew more and more cynical and pessimistic. Though his fame continued to widen--Yale and Oxford awarded him honorary degrees--he spent his last years in gloom and desperation, but he lives on in American letters as "the Lincoln of our literature." Klappentext "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" With an introduction by Robert Maniquis Mark Twain's novel is one of the first American literary masterpieces, embracing local vernacular to personify the unique small-town culture of this fledgling nation. Twain drew the adventures of the mischievous yet heroic Tom Sawyer from his own youth in a riverside Missouri town in the 1840s, and created perhaps the finest book about boyhood ever writtten. "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" is at once a comic and poignant story about the fears and fantasies of a boy's world, and a brilliant satire of the culture and institutions of the times. One of this beloved author's most widely read works, it is hailed as an American classic. Chapter I: Tom Plays, Fights, and Hides "Tom!" No answer. "Tom!" No answer. "What's gone with that boy, I wonder? You, TOM!" No answer. The old lady pulled her spectacles down and looked over them about the room; then she put them up and looked out under them. She seldom or never looked through them for so small a thing as a boy; they were her state pair, the pride of her heart, and were built for "style," not service -- she could have seen through a pair of stove lids just as well. She looked perplexed for a moment, and then said, not fiercely, but still loud enough for the furniture to hear: "Well, I lay if I get hold of you I'll -- " She did not finish, for by this time she was bending down and punching under the bed with the broom, and so she needed breath to punctuate the punches with. She resurrected nothing but the cat. "I never did see the beat of that boy!" She went to the open door and stood in it and looked out among the tomato vines and "jimpson" weeds that constituted the garden. No Tom. So she lifted up her voice at an angle calculated for distance, and shouted: "Y-o-u-u, Tom!" There was a slight noise behind her and she turned just in time to seize a small boy by the slack of his roundabout and arrest his flight. "There! I might 'a' thought of that closet. What you been doing in there?" "Nothing." "Nothing! Look at your hands. And look at your mouth. What is that truck?" "I don't know, aunt." "Well, I know. It's jam -- that's what it is. Forty times I've said if you didn't let that jam alone I'd skin you. Hand me that switch." The switch hovered in the air -- the peril was desperate -- "My! Look behind you, aunt!" The old lady whirled round, and snatched her skirts out of danger. The lad fled, on the instant, scrambled up the high board fence, and disappeared over it. His aunt Polly stood surprised a moment, and then broke into a gentle laugh. "Hang the boy, can't I never learn anything? Ain't he played me tricks enough like that for me to be looking out for him by this time? But old fools is the biggest fools there is. Can't learn an old dog new tricks, as the saying is. But my goodness, he never plays them alike, two days, and how is a body to know what's coming? He 'pears to know just how long he can torment me ...

Info autore

Mark Twain, born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in 1835, left school at age 12. His career encompassed such varied occupations as printer, Mississippi riverboat pilot, journalist, travel writer, and publisher, which furnished him with a wide knowledge of humanity and the perfect grasp of local customs and speech manifested in his writing. It wasn't until The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), that he was recognized by the literary establishment as one of the greatest writers America would ever produce.

Toward the end of his life, plagued by personal tragedy and financial failure, Twain grew more and more cynical and pessimistic. Though his fame continued to widen--Yale and Oxford awarded him honorary degrees--he spent his last years in gloom and desperation, but he lives on in American letters as "the Lincoln of our literature."

Dettagli sul prodotto

• Autori: Mark Twain
• Editore: Simon Spotlight Entertainment
• Lingue: Inglese
• Formato: Tascabile
• Pubblicazione: 03.09.2007
• EAN: 9781416500223
• ISBN: 978-1-4165-0022-3
• Dimensioni: 106 mm x 175 mm x 24 mm
• Serie: Enriched Classics; Enriched Classics (Pocket); Enriched Classics
• Categoria: Narrativa > Romanzi