Bibliography: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Twain, Mark (Samuel Clemens)

In an 1895 Courier article Cather writes: "There is that thoroughly stupid Recollections of Joan of Arc by no less an historical and literary authority than Mark Twain. It's only Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn in very transparent sixteenth-century dress and talking the barbarous English in which school boys write their first historical novels."

In an 1897 Home Monthly article Cather writes: "I got a letter last week from a little boy just half-past seven who had just read Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. He said: 'If there are any more books like them in the world, send them to me quick.' I had to humbly confess to him that if there were any others I had not the good fortune to know of them.... Certainly Mark Twain is much better when he writes of his Missouri boys than when he makes sickly romances about Joan of Arc. And certainly he never did a better piece of work than The Prince and the Pauper."

In The Professor's House, Godfrey St. Peter complains because Horace Langtry, a popular history professor, gives credit to students for reading Tom Sawyer instead of studying the Missouri Compromise. In "Old Mrs. Harris," the Templeton twins beg Gramma Harris to read Tom Sawyer.