?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 6,000 - $ 9,000
RARE DELUXE ISSUE 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, original dark brown 1/2 morocco gilt, marbled boards and edges, rebacked with the original spine laid-down, scattered shallow abrasions to covers, spine and corners a bit rubbed, but a good, square copy; few areas of light foxing to first few leaves else very clean internally. New York: Charles L. Webster, 1885
first american edition. scarce issue, one of approximately 500 copies in the rare publisher's deluxe binding. Early issue points include: frontispiece portrait state 2 (tablecloth not visible); p. [13] state 1 ("Him and another man"); p.57 state 1 ("was" for "saw" line 23); p. 155 state 1 (with the final "5" lacking); p. 283 state 4 (vertical line on trousers); and with "Decided" on p. [9]. "The relative rarity of the cloth and leather bindings is clear. Less than two weeks before publication, Webster announced that he was binding 20,000 copies in cloth, another 2,500 in sheep, and 500 copies in three-quarter leather. The remaining 7,000 copies of the first printing were probably bound up in similar proportions. Leather copies dried out, cracked apart, and have survived in even fewer numbers than the original production numbers would promise" (MacDonnell, 35). BAL 3415; Peter Parley to Penrod, pp. 75-76.
