Tom Sawyer Abroad / Tom Sawyer, Detective

“Do you reckon Tom Sawyer was satisfied after all them adventures? No, he wasn’t. It only just pisoned him for more.” So Huck declares at the start of these once-celebrated but now little-known sequels to his own adventures. Tom, Huck, and Jim set sail to Africa in a futuristic air balloon, where they survive encounters with lions, robbers, and fleas and see some of the world’s greatest wonders in Tom Sawyer Abroad. The boys then turn sleuth in Tom Sawyer, Detective as they attempt to solve a mysterious murder in this burlesque of the immensely popular detective novels of the time. Replete with down-home, backwoods Missouri wisdom, these two stories tackle every subject from the Crusades and chronometers to ghosts and swearing popes.

This authoritative edition includes all of the original illustrations Mark Twain commissioned from Dan Beard (“the only man who can correctly illustrate my writings”) and A. B. Frost (“the best humorous artist that I know”). Based directly on the author’s manuscripts, incorporating only his revisions and restoring many passages once suppressed by fastidious editors, the texts are presented here in the only form Twain intended them.