Dickens's Great Expectations in Harper's Weekly and Twain's Civil War: An Influence on Cairo in Huckleberry Finn.

The article examines the intertextual relationship between Charles Dickens's *Great Expectations* and Mark Twain's *Adventures of Huckleberry Finn*, focusing on the possibility that Twain read the serialization of *Great Expectations* in *Harper's Weekly* during the American Civil War. It argues that the novel's serialization (1860–1861) in a politically charged magazine, alongside extensive coverage of wartime events—particularly those related to Cairo, Illinois, a strategic military site—created associative links between Dickens's narrative of escape and Twain's suppressed Civil War memories. The study highlights how Twain's depiction of scenes near Cairo in *Huckleberry Finn*, including the steamboat collision episode, echoes Magwitch's escape in *Great Expectations*, serving as a displaced representation of Twain's conflicted wartime experiences in Missouri, including his brief militia service and desertion. This analysis situates *Great Expectations* as a Civil War–associated text for American readers and suggests that Twain's engagement with Dickens's work during the war influenced his literary treatment of slavery, emancipation, and personal memory, reflecting broader transatlantic cultural exchanges involving the slave narrative.