“ALL MODERN LITERATURE COMES FROM ONE BOOK BY MARK TWAIN. IT’S THE BEST BOOK WE’VE HAD”: FIRST ISSUE OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN, IN THE EXCEPTIONALLY RARE BLUE CLOTH BINDING

TWAIN, Mark. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer's Comrade). New York: Charles L. Webster, 1885. Octavo, original gilt- and black-stamped blue pictorial cloth. Housed in a custom clamshell box.

Rare first edition, first issue, of “the most praised and most condemned 19th-century American work of fiction,” one of an unspecified but small number of early copies bound in blue cloth to match Tom Sawyer rather than the usual green cloth, with 174 illustrations by Edward Kemble.

This is a rare, blue cloth copy of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Twain once described Huck Finn as "a book of mine where a sound heart and a deformed conscience come into collision and conscience suffers defeat." Written over an eight-year period, Huckleberry Finn endured critical attacks from the moment of publication, standing accused of "blood-curdling humor," immorality, coarseness and profanity. The book nevertheless emerged as one of the defining novels of American literature, prompting Hemingway to declare: "All modern literature comes from one book by Mark Twain. It's the best book we've had. All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing since." Huck has been called "the most praised and most condemned 19th-century American work of fiction" (Legacies of Genius, 47). Subscribers who had already purchased Tom Sawyer, and wanted a binding to match, were invited to request a blue cloth binding on Huck instead of the publisher's green. This is one of those blue bindings—20 times rarer than the green. This copy has all of the commonly identified first issue points (the printer assembled copies haphazardly; bibliographers do not yet agree as to the priority of many points). First issue points: page [9] with "Decided" remaining uncorrected (to "Decides"); page [13], illustration captioned "Him and another Man" listed as on page 88; page 57, 11th line from bottom reads "with the was." Debate continues over the priority of other points of issue and state. This copy contains the following points of bibliographical interest: frontispiece portrait, bearing the Heliotype Printing Co. imprint, has cloth table cover under the bust; copyright page dated 1884; page 143 with "l" missing from "Col" and broken "b" in "body" on line seven; page 155 with the final "5" present and aligned but in a slightly different font; page 161, no signature mark "11"; pages 283-84 is a cancel (Kemble's illustration with straight pant-fly) as described by Johnson (page 48) and MacDonnell (pages 32-33). BAL 3415. Johnson, 43-50. MacDonnell, 29-35. McBride, 93. Grolier American 87.

Light expert restoration to cloth, gilt bright. Occasional foxing, rear inner hinge expertly reinforced. A lovely copy in the rare and desirable blue cloth.