Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1876)

Huck's novel is here on comic merit, not reputation. Huck tells his story in his own voice and never sees the joke, so the humor comes from what he describes with a straight face, above all the king and the duke, two con men who rehearse a mangled Shakespeare, then fleece a town with a crude show called the Royal Nonesuch. It is also a serious book about slavery, and it uses a racial slur constantly, which many readers find hard going. The final Tom Sawyer chapters are a farce that divides readers.