Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (First Edition)

1885 TWAIN, Mark. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer's Comrade). New York: Charles L. Webster, 1885. FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING, FIRST STATE. Square Octavo, original three-quarter brown publisher's morocco and marbled boards, marbled edges, gilt-decorated spine, marbled endpapers. First edition, first printing, first state of Twain's masterpiece, one of approximately 500 copies bound in publisher's three-quarter morocco binding. Copies of Huckleberry Finn were assembled haphazardly by the printer and there has yet to be agreement among bibliographers as to the priority of many points: This copy has all of the commonly identified first state points. First issue points include: On page 13, the list of illustrations has "Him and another Man" listed on page 88 (first state -- this was corrected later); Page 57 reads "with the was" (first state, this was later corrected to "with the saw"); page 9 with uncorrected "decided" (first state, this was later corrected to "decides"); Illustration on Page 283 with straight fly line (second state, curved line preferred); Copyright page dated 1884, as usual; signature number "11" on page 161 missing (first state); Final "5" dropped on page 155 (this was later replaced with a five of a different typeface); Dropped "I" in "Col," on page 143 and in "body" the "b" is broken. Frontispiece portrait shows sculptor's name and has the "Heliotype Printing Company" imprint (no priority is assigned because this was separately printed and tipped in). Defects: there is general light wear as is visible in the photos. The frontis illustration of Finn holding a fish has a half inch closed tear at the bottom left. Lacking frontis tissue guard. There is soiling to the frontis photo of Mark Twain's bust and there is sporadic soiling and smudging to the pages from handling. The signatures have been been professionally strengthened with a strip in the rear at the gutter. This strip matches the marbled endsheet. Overall a VERY GOOD PLUS condition with the all of the original binding intact and unrestored. BAL 3415. McBride, 93. Grolier American 100: 87. MacDonnell, 31. Scarce and desirable in the original publisher's three-quarter morocco binding. Twain once described Huckleberry Finn as "a book of mine where a sound heart and a deformed conscience come into collision and conscience suffers defeat." Written over an eight-year period, the novel was blasted by critics from the moment of publication, attacked for its "blood-curdling humor," immorality, coarseness and profanity. "All modern literature comes from one book by Mark Twain," Hemingway wrote, "It's the best book we've had. All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since." Copies of Huckleberry Finn in the original publisher's leather bindings are quite rare: "The relative rarity of the cloth and leather bindings is clear. Less than two weeks before publication, [the publisher] 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 7000 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).