"This edition prints the first and only text of Mark Twain's masterpiece ever based on his complete manuscript - including its first 663 pages, half the book, lost for over a hundred years until discovered in 1990 in a Los Angeles attic. Using this newly restored manuscript, the editors have recovered thousands of details of wording, spelling, and punctuation which were misread, "corrected," or simply overlooked by Mark Twain's "typewriter copyist" and his typesetters. The text includes all 174 of the "rattling good" first edition illustrations by E.W. Kemble. It restores the raftsmen's episode, which Mark Twain casually agreed to let his publisher leave out of the first edition, and includes John Harley's lively drawings for it. And at the back of the book is a new gathering of manuscript passages, some photographically reproduced, showing how and with what extraordinary artistry Mark Twain revised his work. They include Jim's comically grotesque "ghost" story, unknown before the recent discovery of the manuscript. In addition, the editors provide more than seventy pages of detailed historical notes, a glossary, and five maps of the Mississippi River valley that locate various episodes in the story. Combining uniquely rich historical materials with a text as Mark Twain wanted it to be read, this should become the standard edition for all readers of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."--Jacket.