Thomas "Tom" Sawyer is the title character of the Mark Twain novel THE
ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER (1876). He appears in three other novels by
Twain: ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN (1884), TOM SAWYER ABROAD (1894),
and TOM SAWYER, DETECTIVE (1896). Sawyer also appears in at least three
unfinished Twain works, HUCK AND TOM AMONG THE INDIANS, SCHOOLHOUSE HILL
and TOM SAWYER'S CONSPIRACY. While all three uncompleted works were
posthumously published, only Tom Sawyer's Conspiracy has a complete
plot, as Twain abandoned the other two works after finishing only a few
chapters.
The fictional character's name may have been derived from a jolly and
flamboyant fireman named Tom Sawyer with whom Twain was acquainted in
San Francisco, California, while Twain was employed as a reporter at the
San Francisco Call. Twain used to listen to Sawyer tell stories of his
youth, "Sam, he would listen to these pranks of mine with great interest
and he'd occasionally take 'em down in his notebook. One day he says to
me: 'I am going to put you between the covers of a book some of these
days, Tom.' 'Go ahead, Sam, ' I said, 'but don't disgrace my name.' "
Twain himself said the character sprang from three people, later
identified as: John B. Briggs (who died in 1907), William Bowen (who
died in 1893) and Twain; however Twain later changed his story saying
Sawyer was fully formed solely from his imagination, but as Robert
Graysmith says, "The great appropriator liked to pretend his characters
sprang fully grown from his fertile mind."
