[begin page 797]

Each of the documents described below contains an authoritative form of the text of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Derivative printings of the complete text and of extracts are separately listed following these descriptions. Collations performed and the specific copies used are given last.

MS      Mark Twain’s complete manuscript in the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library, Buffalo, New York (NBuBE), was reassembled in 1992 from two portions, each with a distinct documentary history, which are designated MS1 and MS2 in this volume. The first portion, MS1, consists of two sections written in 1876 and in 1880 (MS1a and MS1b), and corresponds to roughly 49 percent of the present text (45 percent of the novel as published in 1885). It consists of 665 leaves, the majority of them Crystal-Lake Mills stationery (CLM), and the remainder white wove stationery (WW). The second portion, MS2, written in 1883, corresponds to roughly 51 percent of the present text (55 percent of the book as published in 1885). It consists of 695 leaves of two varieties of Old Berkshire Mills stationery (OBM1 and OBM2). See Three Passages from the Manuscript and Manuscript Facsimiles for facsimiles of MS pages.
      Mark Twain used three distinctively colored inks in his MS—black in MS1a, purple in MS1b, and blue in MS2—in addition to pencil, which he used for revision only. The papers and inks are listed in the table below and described in detail following the table. (The word cues given in the table are from the edited text and may not agree with the manuscript readings; see Emendations and Historical Collation.)

		Paper	Ink
xxix.1–8 (MS2: title page)	ADVENTURES . . . TWAIN	OBM1	blue

[begin page 798]

xxxi title–5 (MS1b: notice page)	NOTICE . . . Ordnance.	WW	blue
1.1–80.29 (MS1a: 1–280)	You . . . come.	CLM	black
80.30–81.32 (MS2: 81-A-1-81-5)	Well . . . just	OBM1	blue
81.32–82.9 (MS2: 81-6-81-7)	then . . . kept	OBM2	blue
82.9–98.7 (MS2: 81-8-81-60)	pointing . . . quit.	OBM1	blue
99.1-146.11 (MS1a: 280-446)	We . . . it.”	CLM	black
146.12–188.16 (MS1b: 447–663).	“Well . . . with.	WW	purple
189.1–362.11 (MS2: 160–787)	They . . . Finn.	OBM1	blue

papers and inks in the manuscript

CLM      Crystal-Lake Mills is white, unwatermarked, wove stationery, ruled horizontally in blue and torn into half-sheets measuring 20.3 by 12.5 centimeters, or 8 by 4 15/16 inches. It is embossed in the upper left corner with a picture of a building and the words “Crystal-Lake Mills.” Mark Twain used the same kind of paper for the Prince and the Pauper manuscript and for page 1-2 of the Huckleberry Finn working notes.
WW      White wove is white, unwatermarked, wove stationery torn into half-sheets measuring 17.8 by 11.5 centimeters, or 7 by 4½ inches. Mark Twain used the same kind of paper for the Prince and the Pauper manuscript and for pages 2-2 through 2-10 of the Huckleberry Finn working notes.
OBM1      The first variety of Old Berkshire Mills is white, unlined, wove notepaper watermarked “Old Berkshire Mills” and torn into half-sheets. The collector James F. Gluck (sometimes Glück), had about two-thirds of the leaves bound into two volumes for display at the Buffalo Library, which required trimming the leaves. The trimmed leaves, all of which have since been disbound, measure 20.9 by 13.4 centimeters, or 87/32 by 5¼ inches (MS2, title page, 81-A-1 through 81-5, 81-8 through 81-60, and 160-263) and 21 by 13.5 centimeters or 8¼ by 5 5/16 inches (MS2, 264–423 and 635–787). The untrimmed leaves, which were never bound, measure 21.3 by 13.6 centimeters, or 8⅜ by 5 11/32 inches (MS2, 424–634). Mark Twain used the same kind of paper for all of Group 3 of the Huckleberry Finn working notes.
OBM2      The second variety of Old Berkshire Mills is white, unlined, laid notepaper watermarked “Old Berkshire Mills,” and [begin page 799] torn into half-sheets. The leaves, which were trimmed when they were bound into two volumes but which have since been disbound, measure 20.9 by 13.4 centimeters, or 8 7/32 by 5¼ inches. Mark Twain used this paper for two pages only of MS2 (81-6 and 81-7).
      black ink • Mark Twain used black ink for MS1a, the portion of MS1 on CLM stationery, which he wrote and first revised in 1876.
      purple ink • Mark Twain used purple ink for MS1b, the portion of MS1 on WW stationery, which he wrote and first revised in 1880. He also revisited the black-ink portion of the manuscript, making changes on MS1a page 443 in purple ink.
      blue ink • Mark Twain used blue ink for MS2, which he wrote and first revised in 1883, on OBM1 and OBM2 stationery. He also used blue ink to write the “Notice” page, in June 1880 or after, and, in a very few cases, to mark or annotate MS1a and MS1b, written in black and purple inks.
      pencil • Mark Twain used pencil intermittently for revision throughout MS1 and MS2. Revisions in pencil are identified by their medium in Alterations in the Manuscript and in Marginal Working Notes.
LoM Pr      Prospectus. Life on the Mississippi. Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1883. Excerpts printed on eight pages in the prospectus correspond to the following passages in this edition and in LoM.

		LoM pages
109.7–111.16	copper . . . ye!”	45–47
116.7–119.2	anything . . . that.”	54–56
122.4–123.20	told . . . again.	60.1–61.15

LoM      First American edition. Life on the Mississippi. Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1883 (BAL 3411). The text of pages 43.12 through 61.15 in LoM derives from MS1, copy-text for pages 107.1 through 123.20 in this edition (“But . . . again.”).
Pfs      Proof sheets. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (A). From the press of J. J. Little and Company, New York. Two partial sets of proof sheets have been preserved. The first set (Pfs1) consists of foundry proofs, printed in two-page spreads, and includes A pages 128–59 and even-numbered pages 160–96, except for page 178, which is missing. The proof sheets for pages 160–97 were torn in half and the right-hand or odd-numbered pages were apparently discarded. The second partial set of proof sheets (Pfs2) consists of imposed page proofs that have been folded, gathered, and cut (not trimmed), forming one complete sixteen-page signature [begin page 800] and parts of four others. This set comprises the following: pages 33–48, signature 3; pages 49–50, the first leaf of signature 4; pages 65–70 and 75–80, signature 5 minus two leaves in the center; pages 325–26 and 329–36, the third leaf and the second half of signature 21; and pages 339–44, the first half of signature 22 minus the first leaf.1 See p. 427 for a facsimile of page 160 from Pfs1. For a discussion of the corrections marked on Pfs1, see the explanatory note to 158.32 and the introduction (pp. 733–34). Mark Twain’s Revisions for Public Reading, 1884–1885 includes a selection of facsimile pages from Pfs2 revised by Mark Twain for public reading.

The pages of Pfs1 correspond to the following passages in this edition and in A.

		A pages
127.25–158.29	got . . . These	128–59
158.29–159.13	sparks . . . they	160
160.34–161.28	“Old . . . brought	162
162.12–163.27	acknowledge . . . Antonette.”	164
164.11–165.17	the palace . . . way.	166
166.27–167.31	no . . . lantern; and	168
168.31–169.22	them . . . Juliet.	170
170.32–172.1	hot . . . Then the	172
172.37–174.8	in . . . fetched	174
174.31–176.14	Then . . . it.	176
180.4–40	The . . . Appointments!	180
181.39–183.2	and Hank . . . nigger-head.”	182
183.39–184.33	The . . . yells—	184
185.16–186.28	throwed . . . off.	186
187.13–188.16	crowd . . . with.	188
189.28–190.34	double-barrel . . . Harkness Pfs1 page ends with “Hark-”	190
191.17–192.33	how . . . anybody	192
193.15–194.29	pretty . . . said:	194
196 title–27	Chapter . . . him	196

[begin page 801] The pages of Pfs2 correspond to the following passages in this edition and in A.

		A pages
16.26–33.5	waltz . . . sort	33–48
33.5–34.36	of . . . maybe.	49–50
48.22–54.29	green . . . lighting.	65–70
58.29–65.5	So . . . snakes	75–80
321.27–323.29	“I . . . mighty	325–26
325.23–332.39	“Why . . . anyway.”	329–36
335 title–340.31	Chapter . . . sweeps!”	339–44

Pr      Prospectus. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (A). New York: Charles L. Webster and Company, 1885. The prospectus contains all the front matter of A, including the inserted photograph of the Gerhardt bust of Mark Twain, “Notice,” and “Explanatory”; seventy-eight pages of text and illustrations; two pages of advertising for the book; and sixteen ledger pages lined into three columns for recording subscribers’ names, addresses, and the style of binding ordered. All pages in Pr correspond exactly in make-up and numbering to pages in A, but collation reveals that some pages exist in more than one state, designated in Emendations and Historical Collation as Pra and Prb. The early impressions of Pr, containing Webster Company advertising, printed the mutilated version of the engraving on A page 283; but in all copies examined, the leaf bearing page 283 on the recto and 287 on the verso has been excised. In later impressions, such as the CU-MARK copy containing an Occidental Publishing Company flyer, pages 283 and 287 are printed on an integral leaf with the engraving in its repaired state. See Publisher’s Advertisements, 1884–1891 for facsimile reproductions of the Webster Company and Occidental Publishing Company advertising. The excerpts printed in Pr correspond to the following passages in this edition and in A.

		A pages
1 title–4.11	The Adventures . . . think	17–19
7.33–8.35	and after . . . ashore.	24
14.35–16.26	and pow-wow . . . got to	31–32
18 title–27	Chapter . . . me.	34
19.34–21.3	He . . . him I	36
25.20–27.18	He . . . sun-up.	42–43
51.1–19	He . . . killed.”	67
55.24–56.7	But . . . dat	72
60.33–61.12	here . . . gashly.”	77
63 title–28	Chapter . . . Jim.”	79
65.5–30	clear . . . fool.	81
70.31–71.16	little . . . Mary.”	87
82.1–85.4	By . . . fix.	98–100
86 title–29	Chapter . . . set	102
93.28–94.17	your majesty . . . the	110

[begin page 802]

126.11–127.25	“I will, sir . . . ain’t	126–27
137.32–139.36	right . . . great.	138–40
143.30–144.13	had . . . woods!”	145
148.2–149.9	stretched . . . in	149
152.4–153.3	front . . . front	153
160.34–164.11	“Old . . . come to	162–65
170.32–174.30	hot . . . it.	172–75
186.29–187.13	They . . . big	187
190.34–191.17	Harkness . . . telling Pr page begins with “ness”	191
211 title–213.2	Chapter . . . its	211–12
232.2–233.20	and . . . I’ve	232–33
236.37–237.17	“Is . . . would	237
239.32–240.33	uncles at . . . answer	241
244.31–246.5	“Sakes . . . dark?	246
256.2–257.11	Well . . . stunned,	257
261 title–26	Chapter . . . now, and	261
262.32–263.11	“Shucks . . . now	263
272.30–273.14	for . . . nigger.”	274
282.16–29	what . . . me.	283
285.31–287.3	“No . . . says:	287
289.1–290.18	nothing . . . before,	290–91
291 title–25	Chapter . . . up	293
299.30–300.13	I . . . ladder.”	302
301.31–303.30	“Prisoners . . . settled	304–5
310.34–312.4	him, and . . . something Pr page ends with “some-”	314
314.30–315.28	“Ther’s . . . a-raging	318
318.34–319.35	washpans . . . on Pr page begins with “pans”	322
321 title–26	Chapter . . . hain’t.”	324
327.15–328.16	“Well . . . most	331
329 title–28	Chapter . . . they’d	333
330.32–332.5	them . . . it	335
336.31–337.13	was always . . . pretty	341
338.25–341.16	So . . . islands,	343–45
343 title–26	Chapter . . . three?”	347
345.36–347.5	cretur . . . s’e; think	350
351 title–25	Chapter . . . says:	355
352.33–354.2	help . . . before he	357
357.2–358.39	“I mean . . . here.”	361–62
360 title–362.10	Chapter . . . before.	364–66

A      First American edition. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. New York: Charles L. Webster and Company, 1885–91 (BAL 3415). [begin page 803] Collation reveals that several pages exist in more than one state, designated in Emendations and Historical Collation as Aa and Ab. These designations refer to earlier and later states of particular sheets, not of whole copies; copies of A have various combinations of sheets in earlier and later states.
Can      Canadian issue of A. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Montreal: Dawson Brothers, 1885. This issue was printed from a duplicate set of plates of A.
Cent      Excerpts from Huckleberry Finn, set from A and revised by Mark Twain, were printed in three issues of the Century Magazine; [begin page 804] those excerpts correspond to the following passages in this edition. In several instances some of the A text was deleted from the passages in the Century: see Emendations and Historical Collation for details.

“An Adventure of Huckleberry Finn: With an Account of the Famous Grangerford-Shepherdson Feud,” Century 29 (December 1884): 268–78.

156.5–157.31	Here . . . air.
130.3–155.5	we . . . raft. “We . . . raft.” in Cent

“Jim’s Investments, and King Sollermun,” Century 29 (January 1885): 456–58.

55.6–57.15	Jim . . . no mo’.” “Jim . . . nigger.’” in Cent
93.26–96.9	I . . . him!”

“Royalty on the Mississippi: As Chronicled by Huckleberry Finn,” Century 29 (February 1885): 544–67.

157.34–184.4	Soon . . . fights.
194.20–249.6	Well . . . up. “Well . . . up!” in Cent

The following complete editions were found to derive from A without authority.

E      First issue of the first English edition. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. London: Chatto and Windus, 1884 (BAL 3414). Second impression, 1885; third and later impressions, 1897–1910. This illustrated edition was typeset from a set of proof sheets of A.

X

First English edition, first issue (E). Chatto and Windus, 1884. Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library (CU-MARK).

Eb      Second issue of the first English edition. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. London: Chatto and Windus, 1884 and later. This inexpensive volume was printed from plates made by overrunning the type originally set for E on a shorter measure, after the removal of the illustrations and extra leading between lines. Apparently the first two impressions, [begin page 805] made in 1884, were shipped en bloc to George Robertson of Melbourne as a “colonial edition” not to be sold in the British Isles. No copy of either impression having been located, it is not known whether the imprint used was Chatto and Windus or Robertson. Beginning with the third impression in 1886 and continuing until well after Clemens’s death, this issue was sold in England, probably in both wrappers and illustrated boards.2 One impression was made in 1910 with the imprint of the Musson Book Company of Toronto on the title page.
Tau      Continental edition. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1885. Collection of British and American Authors, volumes 2307 and 2308. This unillustrated edition was set from E. See Mark Twain’s Revisions for Public Reading, 1895–1896 for facsimiles of pages from Tau marked by Clemens for his 1895–96 reading tour.
A2      Second American edition. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. New York: Charles L. Webster and Company, 1891–94. This edition was set from A.

X

Second American edition (A2). Charles L. Webster and Company, 1891. Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library (CU-MARK).

A3      Third American edition. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1896 and later. This edition was set from A2.
A4      Fourth American edition. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Hartford: American Publishing Company, 1899, 1901, 1903; New York: Harper and Brothers, 1903 and later; New York: P. F. Collier and Son, 1921 and later; Gabriel Wells, 1922 and later. This edition was set from A3.3 [begin page 806]

X

Fourth American edition (A4). A selection of imprints, 1899–1922. From left to right: the American Publishing Company’s “Royal Edition,” “Autograph Edition,” and “Edition De Luxe”; Harper and Brothers’ “Library Edition” and “Hillcrest Edition”; and Gabriel Wells’s “Definitive Edition.” Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library (CU-MARK).

E2      Second English edition. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, London: Chatto and Windus, 1909. This edition was set from E.
      The following excerpts were found to derive without authority from A and Cent.

The first part of the January 1885 Century Magazine installment (55.6–57.15), evidently syndicated by the Century, was reprinted in at least four newspapers:

The “Notice” (p. xxxi) and chapter 21 (177.1–188.16), syndicated by Allen Thorndike Rice, were reprinted in at least three newspapers:

The episode about Jim and his deaf daughter (201.21–202.10, “What . . . so!”) was reprinted in at least two newspapers:

The feud episode (142.1–154.33, “Col. Grangerford . . . Mississippi”) was reprinted, with Clemens’s permission, in an anthology:

Four types of collation were employed in the preparation of this edition. Sight collation was used to compare two or more texts either not in type or printed from different typesettings. Machine collation with the Hinman collator was used to compare two copies printed from the same typesetting or from plates cast from the same typesetting. Light-box collation was used to compare the same sorts of copies by superimposing high-quality photocopies of the original texts. Electronic collation was used to compare electronic transcriptions of different authorized texts.

This revised edition is based on the complete manuscript (MS1 and MS2), the first half of which was unknown to exist during preparation of the 1985 and 1988 editions. In order to make use of electronic collating and editing tools, new electronic transcriptions of both the manuscript and the text as published in the first American editions of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Life on the Mississippi were prepared for this edition. These transcriptions were sight collated in both single-person readings and two-person readings against the original documents. The corrected transcriptions, in WordPerfect 8, were then electronically compared (using DocuComp software, version 1.2) to supply a full record of variants. During the editing process, these variants were checked against the documents several times. In addition, in order to provide a complete and accurate record of the author’s usage and revision, the perfected electronic texts of the manuscript and the first American edition [begin page 808] —ASCII texts tagged for speaker, page, document, and emphasis—were analyzed using the TACT concordance and text-retrieval program. The results were then imported into separate fields in Access 97, a database management system, which enabled more sophisticated searching and comparison.

Printer’s copy for this edition was a marked photocopy of the 1988 edition. The printer’s copy was exhaustively checked against the complete manuscript: the original MS1 and MS2 at the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library; the photocopy of MS1 prepared at Buffalo; and the published facsimile of MS2 [SLC 1983]). ]). During production the manuscript (photocopy and facsimile) was once again sight collated against the proofs for this edition.

All new collations were checked against records of collations performed at the Iowa Textual Center and against records of the collations undertaken at the Mark Twain Project for the 1985 and 1988 editions of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

sight collations

MS1 (NBuBE, PH) vs. MS1 transcription, three collations

MS2 (NBuBE, PH) vs. MS2 transcription, three collations

MS2 (NBuBE, PH) vs. A (Hill [facsimile edition, SLC 1962]), four collations

Cent (CU-MARK copy 1) vs. A (Hill)

Cent (CU) vs. A (Hill)

A (CU-MARK Nowell) vs. A2 (Koundakjian “O. A. Webster”)

A (CU-MARK Nowell) vs. A3 (Koundakjian “Gabriel”)

A (CU-MARK Nowell) vs. A4a (CtY-BR “Royal Edition,” PH)

A (CU-MARK Nowell) vs. A4b (CU-MARK “Edition De Luxe”)

A (CU-MARK Nowell) vs. E (CU-MARK Barrett)

A (CU-MARK Blake) vs. E (CU-MARK Appert) [partial collation, chapters 1–8]

A (NBuBE) vs. Can (NBuBE) [spot collation]

E (CU-MARK Barrett) vs. E (TxU AC-L/W357/C591a) [partial collation, chapters 1, 8, 22]

E (CU-MARK Barrett) vs. Eb (CU-MARK) [partial collation, chapters 1, 8, 22, 23, 32, 43]

E (CU-MARK Barrett) vs. E2 (Koundakjian) [partial collation, chapters 1, 8, 22, 23, 32, 43]

E (CU-MARK Barrett) vs. Tau (NN, PH) [partial collation, chapters 1, 8, 22, 23, 32, 43]

Cent (CU) vs. Louisville Courier-Journal (MoU, PH)

Cent (CU) vs. Boston Budget (ICRL, PH)

Cent (CU) vs. Cleveland Leader (OHi, PH)

Cent (CU) vs. New Orleans Picayune (CU-MARK, PH)

[begin page 809] A (CU-MARK Nowell) vs. Boston Herald (MU, PH)

A (CU-MARK Nowell) vs. New York Tribune (CU, PH)

A (CU-MARK Nowell) vs. Chicago Times (CtY-BR, PH)

A (CU-MARK Blake) vs. Chicago Herald (IU, PH)

A (CU-MARK Blake) vs. Cleveland Herald (OHi, PH)

A (CU-MARK Blake) vs. A Library of American Literature (CU-MARK)

machine collations

Pfs (CU-MARK) vs. A (CU-MARK Blake)

Pr (CU-MARK Appert F38) vs. Pr (CU-MARK Occidental)

Pr (CU-MARK Appert F38) vs. A (CU-MARK Blake)

A (CU-MARK Nowell) vs. A (CU-MARK Blake)

A (CU-MARK Nowell) vs. A (CU-MARK Appert F34)

A (CU-MARK Nowell) vs. A (NcD 1891 impression [817.44/C625AF])

A (CU-MARK Blake) vs. A (Hill)

A (CU-MARK Blake) vs. Can (WU, Brownell)

light-box collations

LoM (CU-MARK Caldwell) vs. LoM (CU-MARK McCrea)

LoM Pr (CU-MARK) vs. LoM Pr (CU-MARK Appert F28)

LoM Pr (CU-MARK “ERRQ”) vs. LoM Pr (CU-BANC)

LoM Pr (CU-MARK “ERRQ”) vs. LoM (CU-MARK McCrea)

LoM Pr (CU-MARK Appert F28) vs. LoM (CU-MARK Caldwell)

LoM Pr (CU-MARK Appert F28) vs. LoM (CU-MARK Schaertzer)

electronic collations

MS transcript vs. transcript from A (CU-MARK Nowell) and LoM (CU-MARK Caldwell)