Everett pulls off a masterly linguistic confection, in which enslaved people use Black English only as a wary affectation.

On Feb. 15, 1885, 140 years ago next week, Mark Twain’s best work of fiction, “Huckleberry Finn,” was first published in the United States. Critics berated the book. In Concord, Massachusetts, ...

You can hear that stress prefigured at the end of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” when Huck admits, “If I’d a knowed what a trouble it was to make a book I wouldn’t a tackled it.” ...

Huckleberry Finn, a rambunctious boy adventurer chafing under the bonds of civilization, escapes his humdrum world and his selfish, plotting father by sailing a raft down the Mississippi River.