“That is just the way with some people. They get down on a thing when they don’t know nothing about it": First Edition Of Huckleberry Finn in The Rare Original Publisher’s Morocco
Twain, Mark (Samuel L. Clemens).
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade).
New York: Charles L. Webster and Company, 1885.
First edition, first issue of Twain’s masterpiece, one of approximately 500 copies bound in publisher’s three-quarters morocco binding. Octavo, original three-quarters brown morocco and marbled boards, gilt-decorated spine, marbled endpapers. Lithographic frontispiece and with 174 illustrations by E.W. Kemble, photographic portrait frontispiece of the bust of Mark Twain by Karl Gerhardt. Copies of Huckleberry Finn in the original publisher’s leather bindings are quite rare: “The relative rarity of the cloth and leather bindings is clear. Less than two weeks before publication, [the publisher] Webster announced that he was binding 20,000 copies in cloth, another 2,500 in sheep, and 500 copies in three-quarter leather. The remaining 7000 copies of the first printing were probably bound up in similar proportions Leather copies dried out, cracked apart, and have survived in even fewer numbers than the original production numbers would promise” (MacDonnell, 35). In very good condition, rebacked with light rubbing to the bottom cloth. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box. A very nice example.
Price: $9,500.00
