Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: The Only Authoritative Text, by Mark Twain, edited by Victor Fischer and Lin Salamo, with original illustrations by E.W. Kemble and John Harley (The Mark Twain Library, 561 pages, $14.95).
Any Mark Twain enthusiast knows that in 1990 significant parts of the original manuscript of Huck Finn -- lost for 100 years --were found in a Los Angeles attic. That material, along with an exhaustive re-examination of other sources and interpretations, has been incorporated into this text. This elegant edition includes all of the 174 Kemble illustrations that were in the first edition, and much favored by the author. A strong case has been made that Huck Finn is The Great American Novel. That will be debated as long as literature and humans to read it survive. There can be little doubt that this edition will stand as the authoritative edition of the work from hence forward.
