mself a beloved burden to the poor, tender-hearted old aunt who brings him up with his orphan brother and sister, and struggles vainly with his manifold sins, actual and imaginary. The limitations of his transgressions are nicely and artistically traced (Anonymous 617).
The critic further notes that Tom is always ready for any adventure and is never as bad as he may think he is.
The structure of the novel is seen as attacking the conventions of earlier juvenile fiction and so of striking out in a new direction. Walter Blair in 1939 considered the nature of the book and tried to place it in its context. He notes that the children in earlier juvenile fiction had generally been either good or bad, with the bad being notable for their tendency to sin rather than for any other reason. The stories generally reached an ending with a moral lesson. Humorists noted the differe
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