Dear Nick:
        Here's the long answer:
        Mark Twain did not write any chapter titles for Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn. He titled each chapter simply "Chapter 1," "Chapter 2," and so on.
For the first American edition, Edward W. Kemble provided illustrations
that incorporated the word "Chapter" with its appropriate roman number, and
he also illustrated the first word or initial letter of the chapter.
        In accordance with 19th-century bookmaking style, the publisher of the
first edition provided a table of contents specifying the contents of each
chapter. For chapters 1 and 2 of the first American edition, for instance,
the table of contents reads: "CHAPTER I. Civilizing Huck.--Miss
Watson.--Tom Sawyer Waits. . . . CHAPTER II. The Boys Escape Jim.--Tom
Sawyer's Gang.--Deep-laid Plans."  These are drawn from the recto pages of
the book, upon each of which a "page title" was printed, summarizing the
contents of the page. (On the verso pages was the running head "THE
ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN"--the first edition included the article in
the running heads, but not on the title page.) Whenever a chapter began on
a recto page, a "page title" summary (such as "Civilizing Huck") was
written for the table of contents, but not printed above the illustrated
chapter opening. Although Mark Twain certainly saw the "page titles" and
table of contents in proof, there is no evidence that he wrote them. For
the first English edition, which had shorter pages and therefore more pages
per chapter, the English publisher needed to provide an additional "page
title" for the additional recto pages, which in turn expanded the table of
contents. The table of contents in the first English edition reads:
"CHAPTER I. Civilising Huck--Moses and the "Bulrushers"--Miss Watson--Tom
Sawyer Waits . . . CHAPTER II. The Boys Escape Jim--Jim!--Tom Sawyer's
Gang--Deep-laid Plans." These bookmaking details were considered the
publisher's responsibility.
        As the book was republished in other editions during Mark Twain's
lifetime, with fewer or a small number of redrawn illustrations, the design
of the book changed. For instance, the 1896 Harper's edition and the 1899
American Publishing Company and Harper and Brothers editions dropped the
page titles but reprinted the table of contents from the first American
edition. Sometime after Mark Twain's death and apparently before 1920, some
of the collected editions began to substitute chapter titles, provided by
the publisher, for the lists of contents. In these editions, the first two
chapters are entitled "I Discover Moses and the Bulrushers" and "Our Gang's
Dark Oath." Those chapter titles have persisted through many reprint
editions until the present day. The famous Norman Rockwell Heritage Press
edition of 1940 uses them, as do some of the more recent mass market
paperbacks such as the Bantam Classic (1981). Other mass market paperbacks
have resuscitated the first American edition's table of contents and have
printed each chapter's contents at the beginnings of the chapters as well.
See, for instance, the Dell edition with an introduction by Wallace Stegner
(1960 and after) and the Signet Classic (1959). I don't know which edition
your school uses, but I hope this answers your question about the varying
chapter titles and where they originated.

Yours sincerely,

Vic Fischer
Mark Twain Papers



At 03:13 PM 3/15/2000 -0500, you wrote:
>I have a question that I am sure someone on this list can answer.  I
>teach Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in my CP English
>III.  Over the years, I have noticed that sometimes the chapter titles
>are different in different editions.  Why is this the case?  What
>titles, if any, were written by Mark Twain.
>
>Nick Huffman
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