At the age of 36 Twain settled in Hartford, Connecticut. His best books were published while he lived there.
三十六岁时，马克吐温开始定居于康涅狄格州哈特福德镇，他的最优秀的作品全是在那段时间里问世的。
As early as 1870 Twain had experimented with a story about the boyhood adventures of a lad he named Billy Rogers. Two years later, he changed the name to Tom, and began shaping his adventures into a stage play. Not until 1874 did the story begin developing in ear nest. After publication in 1876, Tom Sawyer quickly became a classic tale of American boyhood. Tom's mischievousdaring, ingenuity,and the sweet innocence of his affection for Becky Thatcher are almost as sure to be studied in American schools to-day as is the Declaration of Independence.
早在1870年，马克吐温就试着写了一篇关于一个他名之为比利罗杰斯的男孩子的童年历险故事。两年后，他又将主人公的名字改为汤姆，并着手将故事改编成剧本。直到1874年他才开始认真地扩展故事情节。《汤姆o索亚》于1876年出版后，很快成为美国儿童故事的经典之作。这部描写汤姆的顽皮、勇敢、机智以及他对贝琪莎切尔的天真纯洁的感情的故事几乎像《独立宣言》一样成了今天美国学校里的必读书本。
Mark Twain's own declaration of independence came from another character. Six chapters into Tom Sawyer, he drags in "the juvenile pariah of the village, Huckleberry Finn, son of the town drunkard." Fleeing a respectable life with the puritanical Widow Douglas, Huck protests to his friend, Tom Sawyer: "I've tried it, and it don't work; it don't work, Tom. It ain't for me ... The widder eats by a bell; she goes to bed by a bell; she gits up by a bell-everything's so awful reg'lar a body can't stand it."
马克吐温本人的独立宣言却是由另一个人物表达出来的。在《汤姆o索亚》第六章里，他引出了"村里的流浪少年，镇上酒鬼的儿子哈克贝利o费恩"。哈克不愿在清教徒道格拉斯寡妇家过上等人的体面生活，从那里逃出来后对他的朋友汤姆o索亚发牢骚说："我试过了，还是不行;不行啊，汤姆。那不是我过的日子……那寡妇家吃饭要听钟声，睡觉要听钟声，起床也要听钟声，什么事情都得规规矩矩，简直叫人受不了。"
Nine years after Tom Sawyer swept the nation, Huck was given a life of his own, in a book often consider ed the best ever written about Americans. His raft flight down the Mississippi with a runaway slave presents a moving panorama for exploration of American society.
《汤姆索亚》风靡美国九年之后，哈克被赋予独立的生命，成为一本被许多人认为是最成功的描写美国人的作品的书中的主人公。他同一个逃跑出来的奴隶一起乘坐木筏沿着密西西比河顺流而下的漂流航程展现了一幅幅揭示美国社会生活全貌的生动画面。