Hilariously picaresque, epic in scope, alive with the poetry and vigor of the American people, Mark Twain's story about a young boy and his journey down the Mississippi was the first great novel to speak in a truly American voice.

Influencing subsequent generations of writers -- from Sherwood Anderson to Twain's fellow Missourian, T.S.

Eliot, from Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner to J.D.

Salinger -- "Huckleberry Finn," like the river which flows through its pages, is one of the great sources which nourished and still nourishes the literature of America.