Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade)
New York: Charles L. Webster and Company, 1885. First American edition, early state. Hardcover. 366pp. Octavo [22.5 cm] Publisher's green cloth with title and illustration stamped in gilt and black on the front panel and backstrip. Housed in a custom natural beige cloth clamshell. Good. Text block pulling away from the spine. Light rubbing to extremities of boards, more so at corners. Cloth is splitting between the front board and backstrip near the center. Bookseller's old catalog description cut out and pasted to front free endsheet.
First edition with all three established printing points: "Huck Decided to Leave" as chapter heading for Chapter VI on the first Contents page, illustration listed as being present on page 88, page 57 has "with the was."
Additionally, this copy features the frontispiece illustration by Kemble tipped-in, the frontispiece portrait of Twain's bust produced by the Heliotype Company with cloth shown (Merle Johnson ventures to guess that this is the first state of the frontispiece), and a tipped-in title page with "1884" on copyright page. P. 283 is tipped-in (the fly-line is curved). Furthermore, p. 155 is incorrectly listed as 15 (Merle Johnson #2), the "l" is missing from the word "Col." on p. 143, and there is a broken "b" in the word "body" on p. 143 as well. Signature "11" is not printed on p. 161. These additional points do not establish the priority of the various states that extist with this title. BAL 3515. Merle Johnson, pp. 43-50. McBride, pp. 92-112. Good. Item #56726
Twain's novels, "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" and "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," forever changed the course of American literature, when they presented the first deeply felt portrayal of boyhood.
Price: $4,000.00