Appendix D | The Writings of Mark Twain (beta)

Explanatory Notes Ⓔ
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Apparatus Notes Ⓐ
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APPENDIX D
Manuscript Facsimiles

In 1882, the year before Mark Twain finished his manuscript draft of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, he described the first half as “a book I have been working at, by fits and starts, during the past five or six years” (SLC 1883a, 42). That first half of the manuscript, written between 1876 and 1880, was missing and thought permanently lost until 1990, when it was discovered in a Los Angeles attic. Readers and scholars with access only to the second half, written in 1883, had long tried to determine when Mark Twain wrote each part of the story, which portions he revised or added later, what his original ideas were about the characters and plot, and exactly how the known half and the “lost” half of the manuscript fit together. The following pages from the entire manuscript—its two halves united at the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library since 1992—illustrate the physical evidence which answers some of those questions.

The manuscript breaks into three distinct sections, each representing a major period of composition separated enough in time from the others so that Mark Twain was using different inks and stationery. The pages he wrote in 1876 (MS1a, 1–446) are in black ink on embossed Crystal-Lake Mills paper; the pages he wrote in 1880 (MS1b, 447–663) are in purple ink on white wove paper; the pages he wrote in 1883 (MS2, title page, 81-A-1 through 81-60, 160-787 are in blue-gray ink on watermarked Old Berkshire Mills paper. Mark Twain had the 1876 and 1880 pages typed before he began writing the 1883 pages, which were numbered to follow (or to be interpolated into) the typescript pages. Although the typescript (TS1) is lost, the manuscript pages below show where the breaks between stints occurred and where the interpolations go.

On these pages are examples of Mark Twain’s revisions, sometimes in pencil, showing the author’s attention to even the smallest details of his text, and also a sample of his careful markings for emphasis which were lost in the transmission of the text to the first edition. In addition, several pages show notes Mark Twain wrote to himself in the margins. Because composition was often interrupted, for a day or for years, he used these notes to review and plan the book’s characters and incidents. For a detailed physical description of the manuscript and for a record of all manuscript revisions and marginal notes, see Description of Texts, Alterations in the Manuscript, and Mark Twain’s Marginal Working Notes.

[begin page 561] The manuscript text does not, of course, correspond exactly to the critical text presented in this edition, in which all errors have been corrected, and all revised readings from the first edition that can be considered authorial have been incorporated. All of the manuscript pages in this appendix are reproduced from the originals at the Mark Twain Room of the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library (NBuBE), William H. Loos, Curator. The editors thank the Library for allowing us to use the digital scans prepared by the State University of New York at Buffalo (NBuU) for “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”: The Buffalo & Erie County Public Library CD-ROM Edition, edited by Victor A. Doyno, which makes available for the first time a facsimile of the complete manuscript.

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Title page, 1883 and 1884 (MS2). Most of this page, including the instruction to the printer on the verso, probably dates from the summer of 1883 when Mark Twain completed the second half of the book and decided on his final title. After the title page was typed, Mark Twain continued to tinker with it, apparently adding information about “Scene” and “Time” on his typescript (TS2), but not on this manuscript page. But in July 1884, months after he had submitted his typescript for publication, he decided to further modify the title page. He sent his changes to his publisher in a letter and brought this page (probably his own record copy) up to date, adding the publication date and the first two lines on the verso (see the next facsimile).

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Title page verso, 1883 and 1884 (MS2). This page reflects Mark Twain’s decision, in July 1884, to alter the time of the book’s action from “forty years ago” to “Forty to fifty years ago” (see the explanatory note to xxix.6). Since the book’s publisher, Charles L. Webster, already had in hand the typed printer’s copy, including a typed and revised title page, this handwritten title page was probably Mark Twain’s own record copy. As instructed, Webster generally matched the title page style of The Prince and the Pauper, published in 1881 by James R. Osgood.

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“Notice” page, late June 1880 or after (MS1b). This page is on the same paper Mark Twain used between late 1879 and mid-June 1880, but in the blue ink that he only started using in late June 1880 and that he used throughout the 1883 manuscript. The canceled notes at the top of the page include a version of the working title he had used since 1876, “ ‘Huckleberry Finn’—Autobiography,” and a direction to place the “Notice” “under preface of to ‘Huck.’ ” Ultimately, the “Notice” would precede the “Explanatory,” which was the book’s only “preface.” Mark Twain left uncanceled a penciled reminder to himself about his preferred dialect forms for ampersands (“en”) and “of” (“er” and “o’ ”) in Jim’s speech (for a sample of his dialect revisions, see the facsimile of manuscript page 209 in Three Passages from the Manuscript, p. 537). He replaced “book” with “narrative,” “this book” with “it,” and considered replacing “Ordnance” with “Artillery” but ultimately did not (see the explanatory note to xxxi title–5).

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Page 1, 1876 (MS1a). Mark Twain began work on Huckleberry Finn in the summer of 1876, but he almost certainly added the penciled working title, “Huck Finn” (which he altered to “Huckleberry Finn”) and the attribution, “Reported by Mark Twain,” in 1880 or after. Although uncanceled here, this title and attribution were superseded in 1883, by the formal title and author credit as they appear on the manuscript title page and in the first American edition (see p. 379). Mark Twain twice revised the often-quoted opening line of the book: he altered “You will not know about me” to “You do not know about me” and finally settled on “You don’t know about me.” (Later, on his typescript, TS1, he added a final clause to the sentence.) The lower right corner of the manuscript page is now torn, obliterating parts of the words “nothing” and “anybody.”

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Page 280, 1876 (MS1a). In the summer of 1883, seven years after he had written what would be the twelfth chapter of the book, Mark Twain decided to expand Huck and Jim’s early adventures, writing sixty pages (about two and a half chapters) of new manuscript, MS2, containing the account of the Walter Scott wreck and Huck’s conversations with Jim. The 1876 portion of the manuscript had been typed by this time, and the text of manuscript page 280, where he wished to interpolate his new pages (the new passage would have fallen between 280.5 and 280.6), was now on the typescript, TS1, page 81. So he numbered the new pages as 81-A-1 through 81-60 to accord with the typescript (see the facsimile on the facing page). In the second paragraph of this page, Mark Twain originally wrote “two nights more would fetch us to Cairo,” altered it to “two or three nights,” and then finally settled on “three nights” (see the explanatory note to 99.1–2).

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Page 81-A-1, 1883 (MS2). This is the first page of the sixty-page Walter Scott passage, which Mark Twain added to the typescript of the first half of the book, and numbered to follow typescript page 81. The canceled page number (“18”), at the top of the page, is either a miswriting for “81” or evidence of an earlier numbering sequence. Mark Twain wrote “Whirp-powill!” in pencil in the top left corner, probably to remind himself of the association of the wreck “laying there so mournful and lonesome” and the fate of the men on the Walter Scott with the whippoorwill’s call or death portent that Huck heard in chapter 1 (see the note to 4.20–22). He canceled “naturally,” interlined “a felt,” above canceled “feel” and “slink” above canceled “spy.”

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Page 362, 1876 (MS1a). This is the last of almost 54 manuscript pages about Huck’s encounter with the raftsmen, the so-called “raft episode” which was dropped from the first edition of Huckleberry Finn (see the next facsimile and the explanatory note to 107.1–123.20). The notes in the top margin suggest that page 362 may mark a break or a pause in the book’s composition. The marginal notes are prospective (“negro | sermon | Twichells | clothes— | p. 58 | ——80 | A town 80 | ball | 46 | House | 236 | Remarks at a funeral”), intended to remind the author of incidents he might use in the next chapters. The associated page references have not been explained. Mark Twain did make use of an incident involving his friend, the Reverend Joseph Twichell (see the explanatory note to 233.1; see also Mark Twain’s Marginal Working Notes, p. 522).

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Page 363, 1876 (MS1a). This page immediately follows the raft episode. When the episode was dropped from the first edition, the first two sentences on this page (“I had . . . sorry.”), as well as the chapter break, were likewise dropped (see the note to 107.1–123.20). “Eddy,” which Mark Twain wrote in the top left margin, is one of the names given “Ed” by his skeptical mates in the raft episode (see 119.16 and 119.29). Mark Twain did not make use of the other note (“child with rusty unloaded gun always kills.”).

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Page 446, 1876 (MS1a). This is the last page written in black ink on Crystal-Lake Mills paper. When Mark Twain resumed work on his manuscript, probably in 1880, he switched to purple ink and new paper. In the top right margin (in faint pencil) and on the next page as well, Mark Twain reminded himself that this chapter began at manuscript page “408.”

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Page 447, 1880 (MS1b). This is the first of over 200 pages written in purple ink on wove paper. Mark Twain eventually redivided and renumbered his chapters and suppressed this chapter break entirely—this passage now occurs in the middle of chapter 18 (146.12).

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Page 624, 1880 (MS1b). This is the first of three pages (two are reproduced here) on which Mark Twain carefully marked the handbill for the king and the duke’s Shakespearean performances, using single underlines for italics, double underlines for small capitals (or capitals and small capitals), triple underlines or block capitals for full capitals, and inscribing centered rules he meant to be typeset. The handbill appeared in the first edition with almost all of this styling dropped, probably because the manuscript had been typed on an all-capitals typewriter, which made difficult the transmission of capitals, small capitals, and italics. Mark Twain’s distinctive styling has been restored in the present edition.

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Page 625, 1880 (MS1b). The second of the handbill pages marked up by the author.

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Page 663, 1880 (MS1b). This is the last of the pages in purple ink and the end of the first half of the manuscript. It shows the original ending of what became chapter 21 (which ends at 188.16 in the present edition): “But they was too late. Sherburn’s friends had got him away, long ago.” Mark Twain’s penciled note at the bottom of the page (“No, let them lynch him.”) indicates that he continued to question the resolution of the Sherburn episode. When he resumed work on his manuscript three years later (see the next facsimile), he chose to take the episode in a new direction, with Sherburn scornfully facing down the lynch mob.

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Page 160, 1883 (MS2). By the time Mark Twain returned to work on Huckleberry Finn in the summer of 1883, after a three-year hiatus, the first half of the book (663 manuscript pages) had been typed and comprised 159 typescript pages (TS1), so he picked up the pagination at that point. On the second and third lines of this page, he originally wrote “a-whooping & a-yelling,” later added “& a-raging,” and finally revised it to read “a-whooping & yelling & raging.” Below, he replaced “or” with “&” and canceled a comma following “it.”

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Page 786, 1883 (MS2). The final paragraph of Huckleberry Finn begins on this page, with Huck’s particular voice and viewpoint very much in evidence. On line 4, to emphasize Tom’s calling attention to his bullet, Mark Twain replaced “&” with “& is always seeing what time it is, and so.” Finding the right intensifier for Huck took several attempts: he first wrote “powerful glad,” altered it to “cussed glad,” then “blame’ glad,” and finally “rotten glad.” On the last line of the page he replaced “they’re” with “aunt Sally she’s.”

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Page 787, 1883 (MS2). The final page of the manuscript. In the first edition, the last line (“The end, yours truly Huck Finn.”) was changed to “the end. yours truly, huck finn.”—almost certainly not by Mark Twain—and became the caption for Kemble’s illustration of Huck doffing his hat in farewell. This edition capitalizes and punctuates the last line the way Mark Twain wrote it, and restores it to its proper place as the last line of the text.

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