CLEMENS, SAMUEL L. | Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer's Comrade). … By Mark Twain. New York: Charles L. Webster, 1885

CLEMENS, SAMUEL L.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer's Comrade). … By Mark Twain. New York: Charles L. Webster, 1885

8vo (8 1/2 x 6 1/2 in.; 115 x 166 mm). Numerous text illustrations by E. W. Kemble. Publisher's pictorial green cloth; inner joints cracking, head and foot of spine and corners worn with minor loss. Green-morocco folding-case embossed with silhouette of Huck Finn.

First edition, earliest possible issue, confirmed by a contemporary gift inscription on the front free endpaper: "To 'Lute,' Christmas 1884." First editions of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn present a welter of issue points, and copies are usually described as being "early" or "later" issues, as an absolute priority of issue has been impossible to establish. The present copy, however, is one of just a handful of copies presented by those associated with the publication of the work that were given as Christmas gifts in 1884, significantly in advance of the 16 February 1885 publication date. Even review copies were not generally distributed much before the publication date, as Clemens warned Webster to "Send no copy of the book to any newspaper until after the Century or the Atlantic shall have reviewed it" (Clemens to Webster, 27 January 1885).

The points of this copy are as follows: frontispiece is "Heliotype," tipped in, cloth visible on table; title-page is tipped in, dated 1885, with 1884 copyright on verso; contents page for chapter 6 reads "decided to leave"; p. 13, has "Him & another man" listed at p. 88; p. 57, reads "with the was"; p. 59, has "le" for "let"; p. 143., has "Co" for "Col."; p. 155 set with wrong font of second 5; p. 283, corrected illustration bound in.

While the recipient of this copy has not been identified, he must have been related to someone employed in the Webster publishing firm. (Two other copies with 1884 Christmas gift inscriptions are both inscribed by Webster himself.) The volume is accompanied by an extensive forensic report by Dr. Joe Nickell, the noted document examiner, which concludes that the inscription on the endpaper is genuine.