P.S. Mark Twain's Notes for Huckleberry Finn

"...like the fragments of glass when you look in at the wrong end of a kaleidoscope."

Mark Twain was a controversial figure in his own lifetime— his most enduring work, Huckleberry Finn, was banned by libraries as soon as it was published. Some nineteenth-century librarians felt that Huck set a bad example for readers. He was unpolished and kept questionable company, they said, as they declared “the whole book being more suited to the slums than to intelligent, respectable people.”¹

Just like other books that have been banned, Huck Finn invites uncomfortable conversations. As usual, Toni Morrison put it best:

For a hundred years, the argument that this novel is has been identified, re-identified, examined, waged and advanced. What it cannot be is dismissed. It is classic literature, which is to say it heaves, manifests and lasts.²

As we approach Banned Book Week, let’s look at Twain’s notes for Huckleberry Finn and how he created a novel that remains just as popular as it is controversial.

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