(Clemens, Samuel Langhorne) | An intriguing association copy from the library of Samuel Clemens

The Passion of American Collectors: Property of Barbara and Ira Lipman

(Clemens, Samuel Langhorne)

Theodore Roosevelt. Good Hunting: In Pursuit of Big Game in the West. New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1907

In 8s (187 x 124 mm). Frontispiece and 15 plates, text vignettes. Publisher's pictorial tan cloth; slightest rubbing to extremities.

First edition; association copy, from Clemens's library, signed by him on the front pastedown: "SL. Clemens, 1907"; in addition, the upper corner of page 23 has been folded down.

These stories of big-game hunting were first published in Harper's Round Table in 1896 when Roosevelt was president of the New York board of police commissioners. Clemens had a jaundiced view of Roosevelt, confiding in a 16 February 1905 letter to the Rev. Joseph Twichell, "Every time in twenty-five years that I have met Roosevelt the man a wave of welcome has streaked through me with the hand-grip; but whenever (as a rule) I meet Roosevelt the statesman & politician I find him destitute of morals & not respect-worthy" (quoted in Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography, 3:1231). Roosevelt was one of the chief targets of the autobiographical dictations published by Bernard DeVoto as Mark Twain in Eruption (1940), which included Clemens's caustic commentary from October 1907 about an unsuccessful bear hunt by the President.

PROVENANCE

Samuel L. Clemens — Clara Clemens (shelfmark T|H28 on front pastedown) — Estelle Doheny (morocco label; Christie's, 1 February 1988, lot 460) — Nick Karanovich; Sotheby's 19 June 2003, lot 233)

REFERENCE

Gribben, Mark Twain's Library: A Reconstruction 2:587