The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
湯姆·索亞歷險記
Mark Twain
馬克·吐溫
Mark Twain was known as a great American short story writer as well as novelist and humorist. This collection of eighteen of Mark Twain's best short stories, including both the well known and the lesser known, displays his mastery of Western humor and frontier realism, the qualities for which he is best known. The stories also show how Twain earned his place in American letters as a master writer in the authentic native idiom. He was exuberant and irreverent, but underlying the humor was a vigorous desire for social justice and equality.
Beginning the collection is Twain's comic version of an old folk tale, Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog, first published in 1865 in the New York Saturday Press. It became the title story of The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and Other Sketches, published in 1867, which was the work that established him as a leading American humorist.
《湯姆·索亞歷險記》（The Adventures of Tom Sawyer）是美國小說家馬克·吐溫1876年發表的長篇小說。
小說的故事發生在19世紀上半世紀美國密西西比河畔的一個普通小鎮上。主人公湯姆·索亞天真活潑、敢於探險、追求自由，不堪忍受束縛個性、枯燥乏味的生活，幻想干一番英雄事業。
小說的時代在南北戰爭前，寫的雖是聖彼得堡小鎮，但該鎮某種程度上可以說是當時美國社會的縮影。小說通過主人公的冒險經歷，對美國虛偽庸俗的社會習俗、偽善的宗教儀式和刻板陳腐的學校教育進行了諷刺和批判，以歡快的筆調描寫了少年兒童自由活潑的心靈。
《湯姆·索亞歷險記》自出版以來，就廣受追捧。該書大獲成功之後，馬克·吐溫又創作了《密西西比河上的生活》（1883年）和《哈克貝利·費恩歷險記》（1884年），被後人推崇為「密西西比河三部曲」，還原了19世紀中後期最真實的美國社會。
試聽音頻
Most of the adventures recorded in this book really occurred; one or two were experiences of my own, the rest those of boys who were schoolmates of mine. Huck Finn is drawn from life; Tom Sawyer also, but not from an individual—he is a combination of the characteristics of three boys whom I knew, and therefore belongs to the composite order of architecture.
The odd superstitions touched upon were all prevalent among children and slaves in the West at the period of this story—that is to say, thirty or forty years ago.
Although my book is intended mainly for the entertainment of boys and girls, I hope it will not be shunned by men and women on that account, for part of my plan has been to try to pleasantly remind adults of what they once were themselves, and of how they felt and thought and talked, and what queer enterprises they sometimes engaged in.
