Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer . Hartford: The American Publishing Company, 1876. [format: book], [genre: fiction]. Permission: Public domain
Persistent link to this document: http://lincoln.lib.niu.edu/file.php?file=tomsawyer.html

Most of the adventures recorded in this book really occurred; one or two were experiences of my own, the rest those of boys who were schoolmates of mine. Huck Finn is drawn from life; Tom Sawyer also, but not from an individual — he is a combination of the characteristics of three boys whom I knew, and therefore belongs to the composite order of architecture.