SOURCE: "Tom and Huck: Innocence on Trial," in The Virginia Quarterly Review, Vol. 30, No. 3, Summer, 1954, pp. 417-30.

Leary is an American educator and critic who has written extensively on American literature. In the following essay, he analyzes Twain's synthesis of romantic and anti-romantic themes in Tom Sawyer.

One cannot seriously quarrel with DeLancey Ferguson when he says that The Adventures of Tom Sawyer violates every rule, past, present, and future of the "art novel," for in its context Mr. Ferguson's statement points out something which is important and true about that book. Taken out of its context, however, as I am afraid it has often been taken, this judgment and others like it have been seriously misleading. There is, of course, a great deal of apparent looseness about Tom Sawyer. Characters like Alfred Temple and Cousin Mary are needlessly or belatedly introduced. Toward the latter part of the...