CLEMENS, Samuel Langhorne ("Mark Twain") (1835–1910). Life on the Mississippi. Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1883.
Large 8vo. Wood–engraved plates and numerous wood–engraved illustrations in text. Original publisher’s brown decorated cloth, upper cover and spine blocked in black and gilt (a bit of light rubbing at extreme ends, hinge cracked near center of text block, several quires starting). Provenance: Charlie Gay (booklabel), co–editor and owner of The Big Rapids Pioneer newspaper located in Big Rapids, Michigan; early gift inscription from Gay to an indecipherable recipient.
FIRST EDITION, TRUE FIRST STATE, with the tail–piece on p. 441 depicting an urn, flames and the head of Twain, and the caption on p. 443 reading “The St. Louis Hotel.” BAL 3411.
[With:] TWAIN. A Tramp Abroad. Hartford: American Publishing Company, 1880. Large 8vo. Engraved portrait of Clemens by J.A.J. Wilcox (BAL state B, no priority), engraved frontispiece captioned “Titan’s Moses (BAL second state), profusion of illustrations; advertisement for The Innocents Abroad on p. [632]. Original dark brown gilt–decorated cloth, heavy “1” stamped on lower cover [see below]. (Extreme ends and edges a bit worn, evidence of bookplate removal on front pastedown). FIRST EDITION. According to BAL, some copies have been heavily blindstamped on the lower cover immediately below the publisher’s device (as here). “It is possible that each numeral identifies a specific agent (the book was sold by subscription) and was designed to permit detection of any agent who violated the publisher’s rule which forbade the sale of copies to retail bookstores”. BAL did not observe a copy with this numeral “1” on the cover. BAL 3386.