CLEMENS, Samuel L. (“Mark Twain”). Life on the Mississippi. Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1883.

拍品 199

199

成交价美元 8,750

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美元 1,000 – 美元 1,500

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CLEMENS, Samuel L. (“Mark Twain”). Life on the Mississippi. Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1883.

成交价美元 8,750

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CLEMENS, Samuel L. (“Mark Twain”). Life on the Mississippi. Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1883.

First edition, first state, of this anecdotal travel narrative, containing an autobiographical account of Clemens’s childhood experiences, including his reminiscences of his days as a steamboat pilot, as well as a history of the river. BAL’s first state, with the tail-piece on p. 441 depicting an urn, flames and the head of Twain, and the caption on p. 443 reading "The St. Louis Hotel.” A particularly fine and bright copy.

8vo. Wood-engraved frontispiece, plates and numerous wood-engraved illustrations in text. (Small stain on a few preliminaries, else very clean.) Original brown decorated cloth, front cover and spine blocked in black and gold; cloth slipcase. Laid-in is the 4-pp. leaflet comprising “The Suppressed Chapter of ‘Life on the Mississippi,” one of 250 numbered copies. BAL 3411 and 3519 (Suppressed Chapter); Johnson, pp. 41-43.

“Life on the Mississippi is really two books combined. The first twenty-one chapters are his early impressions of the great river. ‘Old Times on the Mississippi,’ written in 1875 is here reprinted with the balance of the book, chapter twenty-two to the end, being his story of his trip down the river as an honored guest” (Johnson, p. 43).

Chapter 31 contains the first use of fingerprints to solve a crime in fiction, described by Colin Wilson as "a remarkable anticipation of a scientific discovery that was then known to less than half a dozen men." See the illustration on p. 346 for an illustration of the thumbprints used to solve the crime. See Queen's Quorum, p.45 (note).

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