Every Day Is Special: Huckleberry Finn

Showing posts with label Huckleberry Finn. Show all posts

December 10 – Huckleberry Finn Day

Posted on December 10, 2017

It's always been "trouble"; it's always been great!

This is a sample of
the original
illustrations.

Although the book The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was written by an American author (Mark Twain), and although it is set in America (on and near the Mississippi River), and although it discusses some really important-to-America themes (like slavery) - it wasn't published first in the United States of America.

Instead, on this date in 1884, the book was published in Canada and the United Kingdom.

It wasn't until 1885 that Huck Finn was published in the U.S.

Instantly, it was a book full of controversy. But it was also popular with readers.

Even today, it's a book full of controversy - but it continues to be a favorite of many.

Here's a teeny-tiny sample of why this book is so controversial:

1. It has "coarse" or "vulgar" language. But I read that "itched" and "scratched" were considered vulgar...so I am not sure how bad the language would seem today.

EXCEPT...

2. It includes the offensive word "injun" for "Indian" or "Native American," and even worse, it includes the N-word for black people or People of Color. When Mark Twain was writing and publishing the book, those words were not particularly frowned upon; now they are considered really bad.

3. People just can't seem to agree on whether the book is racist or anti-racist.

One of the main characters, Jim, is a black enslaved person who has run away from the white woman who "owned him." Since we grow to like Jim, and since we see him as a complex character and person, and since the book as a whole largely sides with freedom for enslaved people, I think it is fair to say that the book was anti-racist at the time it was written.

That said, most books published back in the 1800s and the early 1900s - even the anti-slavery ones - seem pretty darned racist to us now, in the 2000s.

We know that Mark Twain (whose non-author name was Samuel Clemens) was very, very, very much against slavery.

4. Some people assumed that the book must be for kids, or at least teens, because the character Huckleberry Finn is 13 to 14 years old. But then they worried about the coarse language and controversial themes (like the slavery thing).

And that is still happening today. People worry about kids reading the N-word, and sometimes other words are subbed in (but that can be confusing, honestly).

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn still makes the news today, because one or another school or library staff will decide to remove the book from its shelves, but it also makes the news whenever the school or library staff decide to put it back on the shelf after a period of censorship! The same year that the book was published, people were censoring it; and it still ranks in top 20 of most censored books!

By the way, Mark Twain once wrote that he meant the book just for adults, not kids. But he went on to say, apparently with a lot of sarcasm, that the Bible is also upsetting to kids. So...I assume he may have meant his book for teens despite his words?

I did not read that Huckleberry Finn was controversial
because it portrays a teenager smoking...

But I doubt that any publisher these days would
emphasize the smoking by using this book cover.

Did you know...?

One TV-movie version of the book, in 1955, tried to get rid of the controversy by eliminating the character Jim entirely!

Wh-wh-what? The book is mostly about two main characters, fellow-travelers on the Mississippi River, both of them running away from mistreatment and (different kinds of) enslavement.

Much of the personal growth we see in Huck comes from his developing relationship with Jim and his evolving ideas about slavery.

How on earth would anyone be able to tell the adventures of Huck Finn without Jim?

Also on this date:

Poet Emily Dickinson's birthday

Anniversary of Women's Suffrage in Wyoming

Anniversary of Jane Addams winning a Nobel Peace Prize

Scientist Johannes Stöffler's birthday

Anniversary of the first traffic lights

Dewy Decimal Day

Human Rights Day

First “computer programmer” Ada Lovelace's birthday

Settlers' Day in Namibia

MPLA Foundation Day in Angola

Constitution Day in Thailand

Nobel Prize Day

Mississippi's Statehood Day

World Choral Day

Worldwide Candle Lighting

Plan ahead:

Check out my Pinterest pages on:

December holidays
December birthdays
Historical anniversaries in December

And here are my Pinterest boards for:

February 13 – Anniversary of a Missing Manuscript Found!

Posted on February 13, 2014

Actually, it was only half of a manuscript that went missing and was found. But it's still a big deal, because the half-manuscript was The Adventures of Huckleberry

Finn!

And it was the original manuscript, written and heavily edited by author Mark Twain himself, in his own handwriting!

And it even had some scenes and pages that had never been published before!

And it was missing for more than a century!

How does half an original manuscript or such value go missing for more than 100 years? Well, apparently lawyer James Fraser Gluck asked Twain to donate the manuscript to the Buffalo and Erie County Library, but Twain could only find one half of the manuscript. He assumed the other half had been misplaced by the publishers, so in 1885 he mailed the half that he had to Gluck, and it was donated and exhibited in the library. Two years later Twain found the first half and mailed it, as well, to Gluck.

Something—we don't know what—happened at this point. Perhaps Gluck was taking the pages to be bound in the same leather that the other half had been bound in. At any rate, Gluck put the missing-for-two-years first half of Huckleberry Finn into one of his trunks—and then he died unexpectedly. And of course nobody knew where the half-manuscript was, and it went missing AGAIN—this time for a lot more than two years!

Eventually, about 103 years later, Gluck's granddaughter, Barbara Gluck Testa, opened up some trunks that had belonged to her long-deceased grandpa, and she found the manuscript pages. Can you imagine the thrill she must've felt?

Testa sent it to Sotheby's to make sure the pages were the “real deal,” as a preparation to selling them. Sotheby's estimated their value at $1.5 million, but after they announced the discovery on this date in 1991, people from the Buffalo Library came forward with their claim of ownership. There was a court hearing to determine who owned the long-lost pages. It was decided that Testa would give the pages to the library—so that they could be enjoyed by all—but that she was awarded a six-figure finder's fee. (Which means that she was paid at least $100,000 for the pages—and maybe a lot more. But remember, it was worth a million dollars more than $500,000!!!)

I think this was a win-win. The two halves of the manuscript were finally reunited, Testa got a thrill and a nice chunk of change, the library got a precious artifact, and Mark Twain's intentions were finally fulfilled!

Also on this date: