Abstract
In a footnote at the beginning of tom sawyer, detective Mark Twain was very careful to acknowledge that most of the details of the plot were not original but had been taken from an old murder trial.1 Many years ago J. Christian Bay 2 identified the murder trial, Twain’s literary source (which Twain did not read), and the person who related the story to Twain. My purpose here is to indicate more specifically than Bay cared to do the exact nature and extent of the debt. I shall begin by giving in condensed form the facts presented by Bay.
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Twain’s footnote reads: “Strange as the incidents of this story are, they are not inventions, but facts — even to the public confession of the accused. I take them from an old-time Swedish criminal trial, change the actors, and transfer the scene to America. I have added some details, but only a couple of them are important ones. M.T.” The trial was Danish rather than Swedish.
J. Christian Bay, “Tom Sawyer, Detective: The Origin of the Plot,” in Essays Offered to Herbert Putnam by His Colleagues and Friends on His Thirtieth Anniversary as Librarian of Congress 5 April 1929, ed. by William Warner Bishop and Andrew Keogh (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1929), pp. 80-88. The volume is now out of print. Most writers on Twain have either missed or ignored Bay’s article. An exception is Edward Wagenknecht, Mark Twain: the Man and His Work. (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1935), pp. 43, 283. See also A. B. Benson’s “Mark Twain’s Contacts with Scandinavia,” Scand. Stud. & Notes (Univ. of Kansas), XIV (1937), 159-167. The last three pages sum up Bay’s article.
Ibid., pp. 80-82.
Ibid., pp. 82-83.
Ibid., pp. 85-88.
“The Parson at Vejlby,” in Twelve Stories by Steen Steensen Blicher, translated from the Danish by Hanna Astrup Larsen, with an introduction by Sigrid Undset (Princeton University Press, for the American Scandinavian Foundation, New York, 1945), pp. 168-201. This is the text on which the remainder of this discussion is based. In this translation the parson’s name is given as Sören Qyist of Vejlbye, but to avoid confusion I shall use the spellings Quist and Veilby, following Bay. The text of Tom Sawyer, Detective used is the Author’s National Edition, Vol. XX.
Blicher, op. cit., p. 174.
A summary of it will be found above. See “The Trial of Silas Phelps in Tom Sawyer, Detective”.
Bay, op. cit., p. 86.
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© 1958 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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McKeithan, D.M. (1958). The Source of Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer, Detective. In: Court Trials in Mark Twain and other Essays. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-8921-7_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-8921-7_14
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