Illustrating Jim in 1978

COVER: CENTENNIAL EDITION, 1978

  In 1978 -- 103 years after Tom Sawyer was published and 93 years after Huck Finn -- Harper & Row brought out a "centennial" edition of the two novels in one volume. At the time Harpers was still MT's official publisher. It's interesting to think about how publishing the two works together may have affected the way people read Huck Finn; while most modern readers, for example, are troubled by the return of Tom Sawyer (and eventually Aunt Polly!) in the last section of Huck's novel, as the finale of this "book" the Evasion episode might feel more inevitable. And having both novels illustrated by the same artist must have brought the two narratives still closer together. In any case, Warren Chappell provided about three dozen in-page illustrations for each novel, with no visible change of style between the two sets. His "Jim" appears in the 8 drawings below. Chappell's heavy use of shading often obscures the personality of the people he draws, at least to my eye, but the two drawings he did of Jim and Huck alone together allow us to see a humanity in Jim that is often absent in other artists' re-representations. This is especially true in the image of Jim hugging Huck during their reunion on the raft at the end of chapter 18, after Huck has just seen Buck killed in the feud -- though it needs to be said that the image of a black character providing solace to a white person in distress is also a kind of stereotype.


The Complete Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain. Centennial Edition, illustrated by Warren Chappell. New York: Harper & Row, 1978. Special Collections, University of Virginia Library.



DETAIL: Centennial Edition
DETAIL: Centennial Edition
DETAIL: Centennial Edition
DETAIL: Centennial Edition
DETAIL: Centennial Edition
DETAIL: Centennial Edition
DETAIL: Centennial Edition
DETAIL: Centennial Edition



MT IN HIS TIMES Homepage Huck Finn Homepage MT IN HIS TIMES Bibliography