“It’s the best book we’ve had,” said Hemingway

Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was first published on this date in 1884. Twain had the idea to write a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, one that would follow Tom's friend Huck all the way into adulthood. He toyed with the idea for a long time, starting and stopping, and eventually setting it aside for years. When he took up the project again, Twain changed his approach, and instead of writing in a formal literary style, Huck narrated his story in a dialect. The book opens with the line, "You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter."

Later writers, like T.S. Eliot and Ralph Ellison, were great admirers of Huckleberry Finn. Ernest Hemingway was a big fan of the book, famously stating: "All modern literature comes from one book by Mark Twain. It's the best book we've had. All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing since."