Sut Lovingood’s Yarns by George W. Harris
April 2018
Before Mark Twain was writing American classics filled with authentic regional slang and dialect—before Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn—there was George Washington Harris (1814–1869) with his Sut Lovingood stories. During the 1850s and 1860s, when Mark Twain was still a growing boy named Samuel Clemens, still working as a printer’s apprentice, and still riverboating on the Mississippi, Mr. Harris’s humor columns featuring Sut Lovingood speaking Tennessee slang were already being published in newspapers. Twenty four of these popular stories were collected and published in 1867 as Sut Lovingood: Yarns Spun By a Nat’ral Born Durn’d Fool, the title shortened on the cover of the book and in the frontispiece to Sut Lovingood’s Yarns.
Because of the hilarity of these stories, the rating for this book would be higher if Mr. Harris didn’t display his antebellum ethnic bigotry in some of them.
Because of the hilarity of these stories, the rating for this book would be higher if Mr. Harris didn’t display his antebellum ethnic bigotry in some of them.