Photography & Ephemera

CLEMENS, Samuel Langhorne (“Mark Twain”) (1835-1910). Forty-Three Days in an Open Boat. New York: Harper & Brothers, December 1866. 4to. Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, vol. XXXIV. Disbound (first three leaves detached but together). FIRST PRINTING of Twain’s first nationally printed work, credited here as “Mark Swain.” The clipper ship Hornet was bound for San Francisco from New York City when on May 3, 1866, she caught fire and sank in the Pacific Ocean. The crew escaped the blaze in three lifeboats, only one of which made landfall after forty-three days on the open sea. The lifeboat landed in Hawaii, then known as the Sandwich Islands, where a young Mark Twain was working as a correspondent for the Sacramento Daily Union. Upon hearing of the harrowing tale Twain rushed to the hospital where the survivors were recovering, and after interviewing them stayed up all night writing the story, then just made it in time to deliver his copy onto a ship bound for San Francisco the next day. The story was published in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine in December 1866, and for the rest of his life Twain would refer to Forty-Three Days in an Open Boat as the piece which launched his literary career. However, due to the rushed writing the editors of Harper’s were unable to read Twain’s longhand and printed the story as being the work of “Mark Swain.”