"Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

On Feb. 15, 1885, 140 years ago next week, Mark Twain’s best work of fiction, “Huckleberry Finn,” was first published in the United States. Critics berated the book. In Concord, Massachusetts, ...

What does it mean that — in Hemingway’s words — “all modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called ‘Huckleberry Finn’”? How did we manage to privilege the story ...

It was the first time the book was banned in the United States, but it certainly wouldn’t be the last. Set in the antebellum South, Mark Twain’s classic tale of two runaways — one escaping ...