August 2020 Catalogue

F i n e N e w A c q u i s i t i o n s 56 “All Modern Literature Comes From One Book By Mark Twain. It’s The Best Book We’ve Had” (Hemingway) 54. TWAIN, Mark. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade). New York, 1885. Octavo, original pictorial green cloth, full morocco clamshell box. $21,000. Click for more info First edition, first issue, of “the most praised and most condemned 19th-century American work of fiction” (Legacies of Genius, 47), with 174 illustrations by Edward Kemble. Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has emerged as one of the defining novels of American literature. 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). Morocco bookplate of 20th-century Delaware book collector John Stuart Groves. Interior generally fine with expert reinforcement to text block at one signature and inner paper hinges, only lightest edge-wear to bright gilt- stamped cloth. A handsome copy. “Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.”