"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 Huckleberry Finn.
Twain seemed to take little interest in the Huck Finn book and wrote it "more to be at work than anything else." …
