You don't know about me, without you've read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but that ain't no matter. The book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things he stretched, but mainly he told the truth."

Huckleberry Finn is being 'sivilized'. He has, rather inconveniently, come into the sum of six thousand dollars. The Widow Douglas has put him in a new suit of clothes, and is making him wash and go to school. He is not allowed to gape, stretch or smoke, and he is desperate to run away...

What began life as a sequel to Tom Sawyer quickly became one of the most important of all American novels. Mark Twain's story of a young hobo and a escaped slave who set off to find freedom on the Mississippi is an exuberant and nostalgic children's book, with subtle undertones of adult melancholy and yearning.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in Missouri in 1835, the son of a lawyer. Early in his childhood, the family moved to Hannibal, Missouri — a town which would provide the inspiration for St. Petersburg in Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. After a period spent as a traveling printer, Clemens became a river pilot on the Mississippi; a time he would look back upon as his happiest. When he turned to writing in his thirties, he adopted the pseudonym Mark Twain ('Mark Twain' is the cry of a Mississippi boatman taking depth measurements, and means 'two fathoms'), and a number of highly successful publications followed, including Tom Sawyer (1876), The Prince and the Pauper (1882) and A Connecticut Yankee (1889). His later life, however, was marked by personal tragedy and sadness, as well as financial difficulty. IN 1894, several businesses in which he had invested failed, and he was declared bankrupt. Over the next fifteen years — during which he managed to regain some measure of financial independence — he saw the deaths of two of his beloved daughters, and his wife. Increasingly bitter and depressed, Twain died in 1910, aged seventy-five.

The handsome volumes in The Collectors Library present great works of world literature in a handy hardback format. Printed on high-quality paper and bound in real cloth, each complete and unabridged volume has a specially commissioned afterword, brief biography of the author and a further-reading list. This easily accessible series offers readers the perfect opportunity to discover, or rediscover, some of the world's most endearing literary works.

The volumes in The Collector's Library are sumptuously produced, enduring editions to own, to collect and to treasure.