The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Fleeing his drunken father, the boy Huckleberry Finn rafts down the Mississippi with Jim, a man escaping slavery, and the great river carries them past feuding families, con men and the whole moral tangle of the antebellum South. Twain maps the real river: Huck's town on the Missouri bank, the island where he meets Jim, the raft drifting ever southward, the shore towns of the Duke and the Dauphin, and the Arkansas farm where the journey ends.

Huck

St Petersburg, Missouri

The town

In the sleepy river town of St Petersburg, the Widow Douglas tries to civilise Huck while his brutal, drunken father returns to claim him and the money he found. Twain opens in the world of his own Hannibal childhood, the respectable town whose rules and hypocrisies Huck will float away from down the river.

The opening chapters

inspired by Huck's town of St Petersburg is drawn from Twain's own Hannibal, Missouri, on the west bank of the Mississippi; sited there.

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