In the new classroom, it’s really not acceptable.’ ‘Huckleberry Finn,’ but we feel we can’t do it anymore. ‘After a number of talks,’ he told PW, ‘I was sought out by local teachers, and to a person, they said we would love to teach. According to Publishers Weekly, Gribben was motivated by his own deep discomfort over the novel’s language and by the reactions of younger readers. To give their project credibility, NewSouth teamed with Alan Gribben, chair of the English department at Alabama’s Auburn University, to do the clean-up job. In this new edition, the word in question has been replaced by ‘slave.’ Most prominent, of course, is ‘nigger,’ which appears 219 times in ‘Huckleberry Finn’ and has been the source of repeated efforts to ban or restrict the novel since it was published 125 years ago.

Here we go again: This week, NewSouth Books, a publisher based in Montgomery, Ala., announced plans to release an omnibus edition of Mark Twain’s ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ and ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer’ with a couple of offensive words removed. This primary source set includes portraits, illustrations, documents, and photographs that provide context for historical and thematic elements in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. From the perspective of Huck, a poor, uneducated orphan, Twain’s commentary on race relations, the Southern justice system, class division, and senseless violence has resonated for over 130 years. However, Jim-Huck’s companion and a runaway slave-is arguably the hero in the novel because of his leadership and sacrifice, despite the fact that Twain narrates his story through Huck’s voice. Twain’s prolific use of the n-word is especially controversial.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was first banned a month after its publication as “not suitable for trash” and it remains number fourteen on the most banned list. While the book seems like a novel of adventure, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is at heart a satire in which Twain examines “civilization” and freedom in the pre-Civil War South. Published in 1885, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remains an American classic taught in thousands of classrooms across the country.

Huckleberry book