Mark Twain was an American writer, humorist, and moralist, known for his publication of many novels such as “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”, “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, and “Life on the Mississippi”. Conveniently I had a collection of Mark Twain”s most famous works in one hardback and I chose to analyze this collection because the version has five novels and an extensive paratext. At the front of the novel, the eight-page introduction written by Elizabeth Boyle Machlan gives a background on Mark Twain, including a little bit about his personality, and an in-depth analysis of characters like Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer and the close association Mark Twain has with his characters.

“Twain criticized Americans relentlessly, but he loved the idea of America. His novels portray the border between what we are and what we hope – and claim- to be” (Machlan, vii). Twain did not identify with any particular party, not Republican nor Democrat, and spent the majority of his life crossing borders that others maintained. Machlan mentions that Mark Twain often jumped around with jobs and was not stationary throughout his life “Twain had been by the age of thirty- two, a typesetter, a reporter, a foreign correspondent, and a fugitive… he lived in the South, the North, the Midwest, and the west (Machlan, viii). Although Twain was not stagnant throughout his life, he maintained consistency in being adventurous. Machlan gives a background of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and mentions the similarities these two characters share with their creator. Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer were southern, best friends, reckless, adventurous, and always looking for something to do. Machlan attributes many of their qualities to Mark Twain and the storylines of all his novels to his personal ideologies. In the introduction, Machlan speaks about Mark Twain’s life and correlates his experiences with those of the characters in his novels to show that the characters are not independent of their creator and Mark Twain was writing from experience.

Some Epitexts of Mark Twain’s famous novels could be reviews on his writing style that he likely developed from the language he learned on his continuous travels, meeting various people, from various places. Additional Epitexts may be literary criticism of how Mark Twain wrote about controversial topics such as race through an early 19th-century perspective. There is a lot of conspiracy that Huck is black and Mark Twain is writing from an African American voice which likely shaped his novel and American Literature overall.