“FAR IN THE EMPTY SKY A SOLITARY OESOPHAGUS SLEPT UPON MOTIONLESS WING”: TWAIN’S SPOOF OF SHERLOCK HOLMES
TWAIN, Mark. A Double Barrelled Detective Story. New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1902. Octavo, original red gilt-stamped cloth, pictorial endpapers, top edge gilt, uncut.
First book edition of “one of Mark Twain’s most outrageous burlesques” (Rasmussen, 114), a rollicking send-up of Sherlock Holmes, illustrated with frontispiece and six plates by Lucius Hitchcock.
"Twain was greatly influenced by Arthur Conan Doyle, whose work he both glamorized and satirized" (LeMaster & Wilson, 215). This parody of Sherlock Holmes borrows both theme and structure from Doyle's A Study in Scarlet. Twain's story first appeared in Harper's Magazine, January and February 1902. With illustrated endpapers in a combination of states A (highest mountain peak in the central panel) and B (highest mountain peak in the right panel), priority undetermined. Without third rear fly leaf or extremely rare original dust jacket. BAL 3471. Johnson, 75-76. McBride, 210. MacDonnell, 54. De Waal 6128.
Text fine, evidence of bookplate removal to front pastedown. Only most minor wear to cloth spine ends, gilt bright. An attractive copy.