In 1936, the Heritage Press, a publisher of fine editions, commissioned
Norman Rockwell to illustrate Mark Twain's Adventures of Tom Sawyer;
four years later, they asked him to illustrate The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn as well. For each book, Rockwell created eight
full-color paintings and numerous pen-and-ink drawings, the product of
extensive on-the-ground research in Twain's hometown of Hannibal,
Missouri. Famously, Rockwell even tried to buy some Hannibal residents'
old clothes, to dress his models in.
For years, the Rockwell editions of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn
have been unavailable in stores. Now, Abbeville Press is proud to
reissue them as a handsome new clothbound set. The color plates are
reproduced from new photography of Rockwell's original paintings, the
typesetting has been done anew to a high standard, and new
introductions--illustrated with Rockwell's rarely seen preliminary
sketches--examine this unique encounter between two legendary
chroniclers of America.
Publisher's note: These volumes present Mark Twain's text unabridged and
unedited, as it appeared in the original American editions of The
Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn (1885).