The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

TWAIN, Mark [Samuel L. Clemens].

Item Number: 116327

Hartford: American Publishing Company, 1876.

First edition, second issue of the apotheosis of American boyhood. Octavo, original blue cloth elaborately stamped in gilt, illustrated with frontispiece and numerous in-text illustrations. Mixed state with the 1875 on the copyright page and 1876 on the title page, four pages of terminal advertisements. An unusually fine example.

Popular and controversial at the time of publication in 1876, Mark Twain’s masterpiece The Adventures of Tom Sawyer has been adapted into dozens of film, television and theatrical productions. The quintessential tale of American boyhood established one of the most memorable characters in American literature who appeared in three later sequels including Twain’s other most notable work, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. “The first novel Mark Twain wrote without a co-author, Tom Sawyer is also his most clearly autobiographical novel enlivened by extraordinary and melodramatic events, it is otherwise a realistic depiction of the experiences, people and places that Mark Twain knew as a child” (Rasmussen, 459).