ARKANSAS A-Z: Arkansas setting brought Mark Twain book, film to life

Set in Arkansas, "Tom Sawyer, Detective" was a novella written by Mark Twain and published in 1896. It was a parody of mystery stories, especially the Sherlock Holmes tales of Arthur Conan Doyle, which began to appear in 1887. The novel was adapted into a movie in 1938.

In the mid-1890s Mark Twain, near bankruptcy after unwise investments, returned to his popular characters Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn to revive his fortunes. He wrote "Tom Sawyer Abroad" (1894), a parody of the travel adventures of Jules Verne, and began a novel to be titled "Tom Sawyer Among the Indians," which was never completed.

While visiting Europe in late 1894, Twain had been told the plot of a Danish novel -- "The Rector of Veilbye" (1829) by Steen Blicher, which relayed the tale of a real 17th-century Danish pastor, Soren Jensen Quist, who was executed for a murder he did not commit.