Most of Mark Twain‘s works include some of the best American humour, starting with the short story The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, published in a newspaper in 1865. Twain’s best-known (più famosi) works are The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). They are apparently simple stories, but at a deeper reading they show American corruption at all levels of society. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer celebrate boyhood and reveal the habits and thoughts of people in America small-towns—small-minded (di vedute ristrette) at times, generous in spirit at other times. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is considered Twain’s masterpiece (capolavoro). In it, the boy protagonist, Huck Finn, learns about human nature’s evil side (parte maligna della natura umana) as well as its kind side (come pure il lato gentile). As a result of his close friendship with a black man ( per via della sua amicizia con un uomo di colore) who is escaping slavery (schiavitù), Huck also must confront the conflict between individual intuition about what is right and the prevailing views (punto di vista prevalente) of society on the subject.