[Headnote]
This list records the changes Mark Twain made on his manuscript of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both in the approximately 49 percent of the story he wrote in 1876 and 1880 (MS1a and MS1b), and in the approximately 51 percent he wrote in 1883 (MS2). The entire manuscript is in the Mark Twain Room of the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library (NBuBE). The list can be used most effectively in conjunction with the manuscript itself, the latter portion of which has been available since 1983 in an excellent facsimile published by the Gale Research Company, “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade)”: A Facsimile of the Manuscript (SLC 1983). A compact disk edition of the full manuscript, “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”: The Buffalo and Erie County Public Library CD-ROM Edition, edited by Victor A. Doyno, is currently in production (Doyno 2003). Each entry therefore includes the manuscript page and line number in parentheses, following the page and line cue of the present edition. Although Mark Twain deleted Jim’s “ghost” story before publication (MS1a, 198.16–214.4) and it is consequently not part of this text, alterations are reported in the sequence in which they occur in the manuscript. They are cued to Three Passages from the Manuscript, where the passage is printed in full.
Certain categories of revision have been excluded from the list: (1) malformed letters or words that were subsequently mended, traced over, or canceled and then rewritten for clarity; (2) slips of the pen, which do not form identifiable characters; (3) words or phrases repeated inadvertently, then corrected by deletion. The cue words always accord with the edited text; whenever the edited text does not match the manuscript reading, the manuscript reading is given in the entry, followed by “(emended).” (All references to emendations are to the entries marked with a square bullet in Emendations and Historical Collation.) The first words of chapters appear in this list as Mark Twain wrote them, even if they have been styled in the present edition in capital and small capital letters. All ampersands in the manuscript are reported here as “and.”
The word “interlined” means that new material was written above the original line with a caret indicating its intended placement; in some cases new material was “interlined without a caret.” “Squeezed in” or “added” material was inserted without a caret within an existing line; in some few [begin page 995] cases an entirely new line of text was inserted between existing lines. “Over” indicates that a new reading covered and supplanted the original; “wiped out” signifies a deletion Mark Twain made by wiping the wet ink with his finger; “follows” and “followed by” refer to spatial, not necessarily temporal, order. A vertical rule (“over-|head”) indicates the end of a line in the manuscript; a double vertical rule indicates the end of a page (“tow- || head”). Each change in paper and ink is signaled in the list with a centered heading. Revision in another medium is specified where it occurs. For a full description of the paper and ink used in the manuscript, see the Description of Texts.
This list uses abbreviations defined in the headnote for "Emendation and Historical Collation" to identify materially distinct parts of the manuscript. It lists these parts according to the sequence in which they consititute the text of the work.
MS2 Page xxixWritten in blue ink on OBM1 paper from xxix.1 (‘ADVENTURES’) through xxix.8 (‘TWAIN’) [MS2 title page]
MS1b Page xxxi
Written in blue ink on WW paper from xxxi title (‘NOTICE’) through xxxi.5 (‘Ordnance.’) [MS1b notice page]
MS1a Page 1 through page 80, print line 29
Written in black ink on CLM paper from 1.1 (‘You’) through 80.29 (‘come.’; emended) [MS1a 1 through 280.5]
MS2 Page 80, print line 30, through page 81, print line 32
Written in blue ink on OBM1 paper from 80.30 (‘Well’) through 81.32 (‘just’) [MS2 81-A-1 through 81-5]
MS2 Page 81, print line 32, through page 82, print line 9
Written in blue ink on OBM2 paper from 81.32 (‘then’) through 82.9 (‘kept’) [MS2 81-6 through 81-7]
MS2 Page 82, print line 9, through page 98
Written in blue ink on OBM1 paper from 82.9 (‘pointing’) through 98.7 (‘quit.’) [MS2 81-8 through 81-60]
MS1a Page 99 through page 146, print line 11
Written in black ink on CLM paper from 99.1 (‘We’) through 146.11 (‘it.” ’) [MS1a 280.5 through 446]
MS1b Page 146, print line 12, through page 188
Written in purple ink on WW paper from 146.12 (‘ “Well’; emended) through 188.16 (‘with.’; emended) [MS1b 447 through 663]
MS2 Page 189 through page 362
Written in blue ink on OBM1 paper from 189.1 (‘They’) through 362.11 (‘Finn.’) [MS2 160 through 786]