Audiobook · read by volunteers
Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Mark Twain (1835–1910)
Read by John Greenman · 17 chapters · 6 h 46
About the book
Tom Sawyer has a gift for trouble. He skips school, tricks his friends into doing his chores, falls in love with the new girl, and goes off with Huckleberry Finn to a graveyard at midnight, where he sees something no boy should see. Mark Twain's tale of boyhood in a small Mississippi town is full of mischief, high spirits and sharp-eyed comedy, but it is also a story of fear, loyalty and conscience, with a cave, a pirate island and a trial. Many of its scenes, including the famous whitewashed fence, have become part of American culture. A single reader brings it to life in seventeen parts and nearly seven hours of warm, funny and exciting listening for all ages. Mischief, courage and a very good fence.
Introduction
Mark Twain was the pen name of Samuel Clemens, who lived from 1835 to 1910. He grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, a town on the Mississippi River, and later worked as a riverboat pilot, a miner and a journalist before becoming one of the most celebrated writers in America. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, published in 1876, draws on his memories of that boyhood, and the fictional St Petersburg of the book is a lightly disguised version of Hannibal.
The book has remained one of the best-known American stories about youth. Tom is a clever, restless and imaginative boy, always dreaming up schemes, and the novel follows his scrapes: causing havoc in the schoolroom, showing off for the girls, above all Becky Thatcher, getting lost in a cave and playing pirates on the river. Its most famous incident has Tom talk his friends into whitewashing a fence for him, and into paying for the privilege. Beneath the humour, the novel is also serious about the moral choices that even a child may have to make.
Twain's prose is relaxed and conversational, full of sly asides about adults, school and religion, and his ear for the speech of the period is excellent. Later he wrote a darker sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which is often considered his masterpiece.
This recording has seventeen parts and runs for about six and three quarter hours, all read by a single LibriVox volunteer. It is a good choice for family listening and for readers who want to revisit a childhood classic.
Public domain
Mark Twain died in 1910: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text