Mark Twain 
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer 

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain  is an 1876 novel by Mark Twain about a boy growing up along the Mississippi River. It is set in the 1840s in the town of St. Petersburg, which is based on Hannibal, Missouri, where Twain lived as a boy.



In the novel,  Tom Sawyer has several adventures, often with his friend Huckleberry Finn. Originally a commercial failure, the book ended up being the best selling of Twain’s works during his lifetime.



Though overshadowed by its sequel,  
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the book is considered by many to be a masterpiece of American literature. It was one of the first novels to be written on a typewriter.



Tom Sawyer is an orphan who lives with his aunt,  Polly, and his half-brother, Sid, in the town of St. Petersburg, Missouri, which is based on Hannibal, Missouri, where Mark Twain originally lived, sometime in the 1840s. A fun-loving boy, Tom skips school to go swimming and is made to whitewash his aunt’s fence for the entirety of the next day, Saturday, as punishment.



In one of the most famous scenes in American literature, Tom cleverly persuades the several neighborhood children to trade him small trinkets and treasures for the ‘privilege’ of doing his tedious work, using reverse psychology to convince them it is an enjoyable activity. Later, Tom trades the trinkets with other students for several denominations of tickets, obtained at the local Sunday school for memorizing verses of Scripture.



Tom then exchanges the tickets with the minister for a prized Bible, despite being one of the worst students in the Sunday school and knowing almost nothing of Scripture, eliciting envy from the students and a mixture of pride and shock from the adults.