The Historian's Huck Finn is an annotated edition of Mark Twain's classic novel, designed by Ranjit S. Dighe for American history courses. Dighe argues persuasively that Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) illuminates several central issues in nineteenth-century American history, which he groups under four rubrics: prosperity, expansion, inequality, and commercialism. His edition contains a wealth of material that places Twain's novel in larger contexts and helps readers understand its relation to broad economic, social, and political trends. Dighe offers three lesson plans for integrating Huck Finn into courses that wish to use literature to flesh out the bare bones of nineteenth-century American history.

The edition includes chronologies, helpful maps, a small selection of Edward Kemble's famous illustrations for the first edition of the novel, a brief introductory essay on Twain's life, and a somewhat longer essay on the nineteenth century. The core of the book's contribution consists of 170 footnotes to the text of Huck Finn, which seek to give readers the background information they need to appreciate the nuances of Twain's work, and sometimes just its basic meaning.

The majority of the notes deal with the institution of slavery, and attempt to sort out Twain's changing attitudes on this vexed subject, as well as the much disputed historical facts about the practice of slavery in nineteenth-century America. Some of the notes deal with economic matters, and are particularly helpful in clarifying what might otherwise be misleading financial figures. Due to the ravages of inflation in the twentieth century, we may not be impressed when we learn that Huck has come into a $6,000 windfall at the end of Tom Sawyer. Thanks to Dighe's notes, we realize that this sum translates into between $180,000 and $350,000 in today's dollars.

So many different editions of Huck Finn are available today that it is impossible to give Dighe's an unequivocal recommendation. Each edition has its advantages and disadvantages. For example, the Harper Collins Centennial Facsimile Edition provides (at a very reasonable price) an exact photographic reproduction of the first edition of Huck Finn, and that means that it includes all of Kemble's illustrations. Since Twain personally authorized all of these illustrations, many would argue that they have become part of the book's meaning. But the Centennial Edition does not have any annotations, and, indeed, has almost no supplementary material at all.

As a professor of English, I am troubled by the fact that Dighe seems unaware that in preparing a text for publication, an editor may have to make some difficult but important decisions. The Historian's Huck Finn does not contain the customary “Note on the Text,” in which the editor explains which text has served as the basis for his edition, and whether he has made any changes to it. Fortunately for Dighe, Huck Finn enjoys a relatively clean text, which does not involve the kind of textual problems that bedevil editors of, for example, Hamlet. Still, modern investigations of the manuscript of Huck Finn have revealed a number of discrepancies between Twain's original intentions and the published version, and scholarly editors have modified the text accordingly. For example, both the Oxford World's Classics edition of Huck Finn and the Norton Critical Edition include what scholars call the “Raft Passage” or the “Raftmen's Chapter,” which appears in the 1876 draft of the book, but was omitted in the first edition for reasons of length. This additional chapter is not going to make or break one's interpretation of Huck Finn, but anyone interested in studying the novel seriously ought to be aware that rivals to Dighe's edition contain more material and a more reliable (or at least more carefully edited) text.

Unlike the Centennial Facsimile Edition, both the Oxford and the Norton editions are annotated, and generally do a better job than Dighe does of glossing the obscure and especially the dialect words Twain uses, which sometimes make Huck Finn difficult to follow. But Dighe's annotations are more extensive than those in the Oxford or the Norton editions, and of course they deal more fully with historical and economic matters. In short, anyone working seriously on Huck Finn should consult a number of scholarly editions. As for the issue of course adoption, I am afraid that the cost of Dighe's edition militates against its use in the classroom.

As for Dighe's introductory essay on the nineteenth century, it is what it is—a very elementary overview, intended for the non-specialist. Accordingly, it would be unfair to accuse it of not being original or sophisticated. Still, some aspects of the essay troubled me. For example, on one of his central themes, Dighe writes: “One of the great paradoxes of America for most of its history is that it is the land of opportunity but also a land of profound inequality” (p. 33). This statement seems to confuse equality of opportunity with equality of result. I would think that an economist would not be surprised that equality of opportunity results in an unequal distribution of wealth.

In general, Dighe's introductory essay seems to alternate between positive and negative views of economic developments in nineteenth-century America. At times, he speaks of the remarkable improvement in the American standard of living in the nineteenth century; at other times, he writes of the horrible conditions workers experienced in the same period. Of course, Dighe is just being true to the complexity of economic developments, which typically involve winners and losers. Still, Dighe could have done a better job of formulating his claims, so that he does not seem to be contradicting himself in the space of a few pages. For example, on p. 35 he says of nineteenth-century workers: “their wages, although high compared with Europe, appear to have been too low to support a decent standard of living.” Then on p. 44, he says of the nineteenth century: “The rise in consumer well-being was even more striking. People … were benefitting from innovations that made a big impact on their lives.”

Dighe never claims to be a literary critic, and does not offer his own interpretation of Huck Finn. Although I learned some new facts about American history from his notes, I cannot say that I learned anything new about Twain's novel. But, then again, I have taught the novel and published on it. General readers will certainly profit from reading Dighe's edition.