Backgrounds and Contexts provides students with the standard source materials often cited by criticsTwains stories of Good and Bad Boys, his Boys Manuscript, his correspondence with William Dean Howells, and his 1870 letter to Will Bowen. This section also includes lesser-known but valuable contextual materials, among them Twains journalistic description of school exercise and the discussion of Perry Davis Pain Killer and other nineteenth-century nostrums.

Criticism includes interpretations by William Dean Howells, Hamlin L. Hill, Judith Fetterley, Alan Gribben, Glenn Hendler, Carter Revard, and Susan R. Gannon.

A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.