"The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" was published in 1876 and in the same year, Mark Twain began its sequel, "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", which he called "another boy's book." He and William Dean Howells, the editor of Atlantic Monthly, had a debate about Tom Sawyer that centered around the idea of having Tom "drift into manhood." Twain later gave up the idea of carrying Tom beyond boyhood; instead, he chose to develop the character of …showed first 75 words of 1326 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1326 total…to a likable main character who spoke like someone they might meet in the street, but not at a church social. The word likable is important. It is one of the things that makes Huck unique for his time, as fictional characters go. Huck's story falls into the general classification of picaresque novels- stories in which we follow a central character through a series of adventures that may or may not cause him to change.