New Acquisitions Spring 2022 – 49 – Bauman Rare Books “All Modern Literature Comes From One Book By Mark Twain. It’s The Best Book We’ve Had” 53. TWAIN, Mark. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade). New York, 1885. Octavo, original pictorial green cloth, custom half morocco clamshell box. $15,000. 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. Written over an eight-year period, Twain’s Adventures of 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 (the printer assembled copies haphazardly; bibliographers do not yet agree as to the priority of many points). Small newspaper clipping and typewritten note tipped onto front blank discussing the edition of this book. 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. “To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin.”
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