"WITH SO ENORMOUS AN ENTERPRISE AS GENERAL GRANT'S BOOK ON MY HANDS I AM NOT IN A SHAPE TO GO HUNTING UP INVESTMENTS": BEAUTIFULLY BOUND LIMITED AUTOGRAPH EDITION SET OF TWAIN’S WRITINGS, WITH MANUSCRIPT PAGE FROM THE GILDED AGE BY MARK TWAIN, A DOUBLE TWAIN SIGNATURE AND A WONDERFUL AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED "S.L. CLEMENS"

TWAIN, Mark. The Writings of Mark Twain. Hartford: American Publishing Co., 1899-1907. Twenty-five volumes. Octavo, contemporary full brown morocco gilt, raised bands, elaborately gilt-decorated boards, red morocco gilt doublures, watered silk endpapers, top edges gilt, uncut and partly unopened.

Autograph edition, number 152 of 512 copies. This set with a manuscript page from The Gilded Age in Twain's hand tipped in to Volume X, a double signature on the limitation leaf, “S.L. Clemens (Mark Twain),” and an autograph letter tipped to the blank opposite the limitation page, declining to invest in a company because of his efforts ghostwriting President Grant's memoirs.

Leaves of the Gilded Age manuscripts of Twain and Warner were sometimes bound into sets of the Edition de Luxe, and especially the 512 sets called the "Autograph Edition." Twain's manuscript leaf, from pages 40-41 of the second volume of The Gilded Age, reads: "…and likely to be vastly more so in a little while. Consequently, she was much courted and as much envied. Her wealth attracted many suitors. From the noble order of the Parvenus and a few from each of the other orders. These Perhaps they came to worship her. Some of the ablest men of the time succumbed to her fascinations. She frowned upon no lover when he made his first advances; but by and by On the contrary she led him and by every means in her power with when was hopelessly enthralled, he learned from her own lips that she had formed" [a resolution never to marry]. The autograph letter, dated "Elmira, July 28," reads: "My Dear G—. Mr. Scandlin evidently has a good business, but you are aware that with so enormous an enterprise as General Grant's book on my hands I am not in a shape to go hunting up investments. I don't know where you are, but I'll send this to Mt. Vernon. Truly Yours, S.L. Clemens." Twain was working on ghostwriting Grant's memoirs in 1885, the same year that Huckleberry Finn was first published in America.

This superb set contains all of Twain's work, including novels, essays and sketches. Each volume with a tissue-guarded frontispiece and a vignette title page. With over 100 tissue-guarded plates, including etchings by W. H. W. Bicknell and photogravures from photographs and from drawings by Peter Newell, E. W. Kemble, B. West Clinedinst, Dan Beard, W. T. Smedley, F. M. Senior, F. T. Merrill, F. Luis Mora, E. H. Garrett, J. G. Brown, F. V. DuMond, and others. These plates were used for the first time in this set and again in various later editions issued by the American Publishing Company (see BAL 3456).

Fine condition. A beautiful set.