Pom Harrington inspects this first American edition, first printing, first issue of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
The traditional issue points on this book are now known to be excessively complicated.
The first printing of 30,000 copies was done using electrotype plates, produced simultaneously on different presses, hence minor variations within the first printing due to damaged plates.
Of the traditional issue points, this copy has the cancel p. 283 with the suggestive illustration cleaned up, as always in cloth copies. The frontispiece is in the first state with the table cloth visible and unsigned on the finished edge of the bust, but this was separately printed and inserted in copies at random, and so has no bearing on priority. The final digit in the page number 155 is from a different fount.
Copies were issued in leather bindings (sheep or three-quarters morocco), in blue cloth for those who wanted it uniform with Tom Sawyer and, as here, in green cloth. There is no priority between them: all were first available to the public on the same day in February 1885.
Though this item is now sold, all our catalogued works by Mark Twain are available to view here.
