All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn…There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since
Ernest Hemingway,

All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn…There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since
Ernest Hemingway,

The quintessential American novel
Guardian

The quintessential American novel
Guardian

It is Huck who gives the book style. The River gives the book its form. But for the River, the book might be only a sequence of adventures with a happy ending. A river, a very big and powerful river, is the only natural force that can wholly determine the course of human peregrination.... Thus the River makes the book a great book... Mark Twain is a native, and the River God is his God
T.S. Eliot,

It is Huck who gives the book style. The River gives the book its form. But for the River, the book might be only a sequence of adventures with a happy ending. A river, a very big and powerful river, is the only natural force that can wholly determine the course of human peregrination.... Thus the River makes the book a great book... Mark Twain is a native, and the River God is his God
T.S. Eliot,

The invention of this language, with all its implications, gave a new dimension to our literature. It is a language capable of poetry
Robert Penn Warren,

The invention of this language, with all its implications, gave a new dimension to our literature. It is a language capable of poetry
Robert Penn Warren,

Running all through the book is the sharpest satire on the ante-bellum estimate of the slave
San Francisco Chronicle

Running all through the book is the sharpest satire on the ante-bellum estimate of the slave
San Francisco Chronicle

I believe that Huckleberry Finn is one of the great masterpieces of the world
H.L. Mencken,

I believe that Huckleberry Finn is one of the great masterpieces of the world
H.L. Mencken,

Huckleberry Finn took the first journey back. His eyes were the first eyes that ever looked at us objectively that were not eyes from overseas... he wanted to find out about men and how they lived together. And because he turned back we have him forever
F. Scott Fitzgerald,

Huckleberry Finn took the first journey back. His eyes were the first eyes that ever looked at us objectively that were not eyes from overseas... he wanted to find out about men and how they lived together. And because he turned back we have him forever
F. Scott Fitzgerald,

Lewis Spratt 09 August 2011

Hemingway hailed Twain's novel as the book from which "all modern American Literature comes from".

Huckleberry Finn is a character caught between heroic resistance and the forces and values acting in America and his society. Although perhaps not the archetypal hero, given his at times passive nature and simple contentness in drifting lazily down the Mississippi river, he is an intriguing character whose relationships with his father and the runaway slave Jim are particuarly interesting for those concerned with early American Literature. Though Twain's fictional friend Tom Sawyer does appear in this book, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn shows the more mature side of Twain's writing, whilst keeping the perspective of a young boy and his unique vision.