●Preface
●Note on referencing
●1 Mark Twain's life
● The early life
● River boating, the Civil War, the West
● Early success, marriage, the Hartford years
● Expatriation, financial loss, family tragedy
● The final years
●2 Contexts
● Samuel Langhorne Clemens and 'Mark Twain'
●3 Works
● Twain's humour
● Travel and travel writing: Innocents Abroad,
● A Tramp Abroad, Roughing It, Life on the
● Mississippi
● Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn
● A Connecticut Yankee and Pudd'nhead Wilson
●4 Critical reception and the late works
●Notes
●Guide to further reading
●部分目錄

本書對馬克？吐溫膾炙人口的作品作了既深刻又通俗的解讀，其中包括《湯姆？索亞歷險記》和《哈克貝裡？費恩歷險記》。作者傾力向讀者展示吐溫式幽默，著重說明這種幽默的效果是如何產生的以及這種獨特的幽默手法是如何成功烘托吐溫的小說風格的。本書對初次接觸吐溫的讀者非常有價值。