?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 10,000 - $ 15,000
BLUE CLOTH WITH SIGNATURE TWAIN, MARK. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Lithographic frontispiece and text illustrations by E.W. Kemble, photographic portrait frontispiece of the bust of Mark Twain by Karl Gerhardt. Small 4to, publisher's pictorial blue cloth stamped in black and gilt, spine darkened, minor rubbing to spine tips, scattered light soiling; repaired defect to lower margin of pages 139-40, another repair to insignificant tear in pages 161-62, contents clean and generally free from foxing, 1/4 roan slipcase. New York: Charles L. Webster, 1885
first american edition of twain's masterpiece in the scarcer blue cloth, signed and dated by him on tipped-in slip to front free endpaper: "Truly Yours / Mark Twain / Apl./94." Early issue points include: frontispiece portrait BAL state 2; page [9] with "Decided"; p. [13], illustration caption incorrect and p. 57 ("with the was") all first states; p. 155 state 3 (with the final 5 extending below the line); and p. 283 state 3. "Blue cloth copies are at least 20 times as rare as green cloth copies" (MacDonnell, Firsts, vol. 8, no. 7/8, 1998). BAL 3415; Peter Parley to Penrod, pp. 75-76.
