The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Twain renamed his boyhood Hannibal “St. Petersburg”, but built it exactly: the Mississippi bank, the cave, the graveyard on the hill, Cardiff Hill above the town. Hannibal has marked those spots for tourists ever since, which makes it a rare novel a reader can already walk. It brings Mark Twain and the Mississippi into the atlas.

Tom Sawyer

St. Petersburg (Hannibal), Missouri

Ch. 1 · 4% through the novel

A new-comer of any age or either sex was an impressive curiosity in the poor little shabby village of St. Petersburg.

The whole book is set in this drowsy river town, where a strange boy in a necktie on a week-day is front-page news. Twain renamed his own Hannibal "St. Petersburg" but kept every street of it, and the town has traded on Tom Sawyer ever since.

inspired by "St. Petersburg" is Twain's fictional name for Hannibal, Missouri, the Mississippi river town where Samuel Clemens grew up in the 1840s. The village he describes is Hannibal on the ground; the pin marks the downtown by the river.

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