First edition Mark Twain books can be difficult to come by and discovering a special antique, a unique first edition or a copy hand-inscribed with a meaningful message is always cause for excitement at Peter Harrington; we are constantly searching for and collecting highly valuable Mark Twain books. From a Huckleberry Finn first edition to a copy of The Innocents Abroad signed in Twain’s own hand, we warmly welcome you to discover four of our current favourites below.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
This Huckleberry Finn first edition, signed from Twain’s publisher to his lawyer, was printed in the US in 1885 and is filled with over 100 original illustrations by American artist E. W. Kemble. Best boyhood friends Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry “Huck” Finn are, of course, Twain’s best-known characters and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a direct sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, is the author’s most famous work. The tale of boyhood primarily follows the journey of “Huck” and his new-found friend Jim, the latter having escaped slavery, down the Mississippi River. Though criticised for its depiction of racial stereotypes and use of the n-word, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, set in the antebellum American South, is also largely celebrated as an early anti-racist text and introduced Twain to an enduring global audience.
As is the case for many masterpieces and first editions, initial reception of the novel was often scathing and it was banned in numerous libraries, condemned for a perceived coarseness of language and crude humour. 100 years later, Henry Nash Smith reframed this view: Twain’s work had unleashed “previously inaccessible resources of imaginative power, but also made vernacular language, with its new sources of pleasure and new energy, available for American prose and poetry in the twentieth century” (Nash, 1984).
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
One of our most valuable Mark Twain books, this primary first edition, first issue of Twain’s first book, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, is embossed on its cover with the classic gilt stamp of a leaping frog. Twain’s hugely popular short story was published in 1867 alongside 27 of his others previously featured in periodicals. Just 1,000 copies of the short-story collection were issued on its first printing and they were bound in seven colours, including this rich sea-green, along with terracotta, plum, lavender, red, blue and maroon (with no priority given to any shade).
The book’s origin story is intriguing – The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County was, in fact, never published where first intended. “Mark Twain wrote his story of the jumping frog… at the invitation of Artemus Ward (Charles Farrar Browne), his friend and the most popular American humorist of the day, to help fill out a volume of humorous sketches that Ward was editing. Fortuitously, and fortunately for Twain, the frog story arrived too late for inclusion in Ward’s book; it was published instead as ‘Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog’ in the New York Saturday Press on 18 November 1865. It was soon reprinted in newspapers and comic periodicals throughout the nation, was pirated by Beadle’s Dime Books, and was later collected with a new title in The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and other Sketches (1867). This humorous short story brought Twain his first popular acclaim and has proven to be his first literary masterpiece” (W. Craig Turner in The Mark Twain Encyclopaedia, 1993, pp. 133-5).
The Innocents Abroad, or the New Pilgrims’ Progress
One of his best-selling works during his lifetime and one of the most-read travelogues of all time, The Innocents Abroad (sometimes titled New Pilgrims’ Progress) chronicles Twain’s 5-month boat voyage in 1867 with a group of American tourists. Journeying on a decommissioned civil war ship, Twain and his fellow passengers were given a grand tour of Europe and the Holy Land, which included several protracted land excursions in Italy, France and Israel. Twain’s tone ranges between awe, humor and deep criticism. In the latter instance, he frequently uses comparison to highlight what he saw as hypocrisies – for example, his observations of a gaping wealth disparity between papal leaders and laymen, or how faith and commercialism contend with one another at religious sites.
The present copy is made particularly special by its handwritten inscription from the author to his neighbour in New Hampshire: “To S. B. Pearmain with the kindest regards of The Author. It is best to rest, on the to-days; it makes us fresh on the to-morrows. Thank you, Mark Twain. Oct. 27/05”. During the summer of 1905, Twain attended a soiree at the home of Boston stockbroker Sumner Bass Pearmain and his wife Alice, and presumably this is when the present copy of The Innocents Abroad was inscribed with this most characteristically pithy of Mark Twain quotes.
The American Claimant
Another of our finest Mark Twain first editions, this copy of his 1892 novel The American Claimant belonged to its illustrator, Dan Beard, whose expansive signature dominates the inside cover. Beard had been proactively commissioned by Twain himself in 1889 after the author had admired some of his illustrations in Cosmopolitan magazine. Twain was, in fact, so convinced of the artist’s talent that he allowed him to interpret A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court as he pleased, in order to produce the images to go with it. The American Claimant was the second book for which Twain commissioned Beard; he would also go on to produce the artwork for The 1,000,000 Bank-Note, Tom Sawyer Abroad and Following the Equator. Beard revelled in being known as “the Mark Twain of art”, though in later life he devoted himself mainly to organising youth development groups and was a founding member of the Boy Scouts of America.
Collect First Edition Mark Twain Books
Today, Twain is universally recognised as an (if not the) American literary pioneer. As Hemingway once put it: “All American literature comes from one book . . . called Huckleberry Finn”. Alongside our best Huckleberry Finn first edition, discover more of the rarest and most valuable Mark Twain books and first editions in our collection below.
