BAUMAN RARE BOOKS 42 “All Modern Literature Comes From One Book By Mark Twain. It’s The Best Book We’ve Had” 58TWAIN, Mark. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade). New York, 1885. Octavo, original pictorial green cloth, custom half morocco clamshell box. $22,000 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. Huckleberry Finn endured critical attacks from the moment of publication, standing accused of “bloodcurdling 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.” This copy has all of the commonly identified first-issue points. Front inner paper hinge expertly reinforced, light scattered soiling to interior, illustration at page 143 has been very lightly colored with blue colored pencil with faint trace of a single text correction to adjacent paragraph, only slightest rubbing to extremities of binding. A handsome copy. “One Of The Most Durable Works In American Literature” 59TWAIN, Mark. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Hartford, 1876. Square octavo, original blue cloth, custom clamshell box. $35,000 Rare first American edition, first printing, first state, of one of the universally recognized masterpieces of American literature. “The first novel Mark Twain wrote without a co-author, Tom Sawyer is also his most clearly autobiographical… 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). “Publication of Tom Sawyer was little noticed… The book has, however, proved to be one of the most durable works in American literature” (Rasmussen, 459). “This was a true boy’s book, and surviving copies are proof of how rough little boys can be on books” (MacDonnell, 40). First published in England (without illustrations). First printing, first state, with all points. Interior quite clean, with only a few instances of light foxing or soiling; original cloth with light expert restoration.
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