Tom Sawyer

What Mark Twain owed to Charles Dickens

7 June 2025 9:00 am

It wasn’t just Dickens’s stage performances and publishing ventures that fascinated Twain, but the witty, journalistic style, which he mimicked to great effect in early travel books

The slave’s story: James, by Percival Everett, reviewed

27 April 2024 9:00 am

A retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in the voice of Huck’s companion the runaway slave changes the nature of the pair’s relationship – not always for the better