Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer Detective

Max Lester Loges (Lamar University)
Download PDF Add to Bookshelf Report an Error
Tom Sawyer, Detective

was an attempt by Mark Twain to cash in on the popularity of the mystery story. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had recently “killed off” Sherlock Holmes and perhaps Twain felt he could fill the void with his own variety of mystery. In November of 1893 he began a story called

Tom Sawyer Mystery

which was concerned with stolen diamonds. His major problem was that he lacked a plot. This problem was solved about a year later when he met Lady Hegermann-Lindercrone at a social event in Paris. She related an actual occurrence from the sixteenth century, which had served as the basis for another book,

The Minister of Veilby

(1824) by Steen Steenson Belcher. Believing that how a story is told was really more important than the actual plot itself, Twain had no problem borrowing…

1454 words

Citation: Loges, Max Lester. "Tom Sawyer Detective". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 18 October 2017 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=8396, accessed 26 April 2024.]

8396 Tom Sawyer Detective 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here

Leave Feedback

The Literary Encyclopedia is a living community of scholars. We welcome comments which will help us improve.