This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 10/20/2022
CLEMENS, Samuel Langhorne (“Mark Twain”) (1835–1910). The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. New York: Charles L. Webster and Company, 1885. 8vo (216 x 168 mm). Lithographic frontispiece by E. W. Kemble with tissue–guard, photographic portrait frontispiece of the bust of Mark Twain by Karl Gerhardt (BAL state 2), in–text illustrations throughout. Original publisher’s blue gilt–decorated pictorial cloth (spine darkened with a bit of gilt rubbed, few discrete touchups to extremities of cloth, inner hinges expertly repaired, scattered light foxing); folding box. Provenance: Henry Park Willis (book label), possibly the same Willis who was the first secretary of the Federal Reserve Board. FIRST AMERICAN EDITION, EARLY ISSUE, WITH A TIPPED–IN CARD INSCRIBED BY TWAIN. The following issue points include: the title leaf is either in the second or third state (first state only noted in the prospectus; no copy has ever been seen or reported); second state portrait frontispiece; first state of p. 9 with “Decided” for “Decides”; first state of p. 13 with “Him and Another Man” plate incorrectly listed as being on p. 88; first state of p. 57 with “was” for “saw”; third state of pagination on p. 155. The earliest sales prospectus offered the book in green but later, subscribers were invited to request a blue cloth binding if they had already purchased “Tom Sawyer” and wanted a binding to match. The blue cloth is considered to be “at least twenty times as rare as the green cloth copies” (Macdonell) as this would be an unsuccessful marketing strategy and would be discontinued by the publisher. BAL 3415; Grolier, 100 American, 87; Johnson, pp. 43–50; Mac Donnell Firsts, Vol. 8/No. 9, pp. 28–35; McBride, pp. 92–110.