Contains twelve critical essays on Twain's works, arranged in chronological order of publication.

Includes index.

Mark Twain and the great valley / Bernard De Voto -- Mark Twain's neglected classic / F.R. Leavis -- First-person narration in David Copperfield and Huckleberry Finn / J. Hillis Miller -- Mark Twain / Robert Penn Warren -- The anxiety of entertainment / Judith Fetterley -- The adventures of Tom Sawyer : a nightmare vision of American boyhood / Cynthia Griffin Wolff -- Deus Ludens : the shaping of Mark Twain's Mysterious stranger / Bruce Michelson -- Creatures of circumstance : Mark Twain / Alfred Kazin -- Life on the Mississippi revisited / James M. Cox -- "Yours truly, Huck Finn" / Roy Harvey Pearce -- Revising the American dream : A Connecticut yankee / Douglas Robinson -- The limits of semiotics in Huckleberry Finn / Cleo McNelly Kearns.