![]() He worked sporadically over the next two years and finished the manuscript in July of 1883. In 1882, Twain again took up the manuscript and began developing the story of the young, white boy named Huck and the enslaved, black man named Jim. After writing the first few chapters, Twain's inspiration for the tale began to fade, and he set aside the work to pursue other projects such as A Tramp Abroad (1880) and The Prince and the Pauper (1881). ![]() Twain's original intention, as he stated to William Dean Howells, was to take "a boy of twelve and run him on through life (in the first person)." In the aftermath of the war and the failure of Reconstruction, however, the work quickly bogged down as the book began to address the issue of freedom and slavery it was not a path that Twain was eager to take. Southern Reconstruction had fallen into disarray, and a new racism of segregation and condoned inequality replaced the slavery that had been abolished with the Emancipation Proclamation. Despite the end of the Civil War in 1865, it was a tumultuous time for America. Huck was already well known to an American audience thirsting for more of Twain's brand of humor, and Twain hoped to capitalize on his recent literary successes. After deciding that Tom was unfit to narrate the book, Twain chose Tom's counterpart, the disreputable Huckleberry Finn. ![]() ![]() In 1876, the same year as the publication of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain began work on another boy's tale of adventure along the Mississippi. ![]()
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