Books and Manuscripts

Twain, Mark (Samuel L. Clemens)
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Hartford, etc: The American Publishing Company, 1876. First American edition, first printing (printed on wove paper with half-title and frontispiece printed on separate leaves, “The” in half-title measuring 1/16 in. high). Square 8vo. xvi, (17)-274, (2), (4) (ads) pp.; with triple flyleaves at front and back. Illustrated with a wood-engraved frontispiece and numerous in-text illustrations by True Williams and others. Publisher's blue cloth-covered boards, elaborately stamped in black and in gilt, spine ends lightly worn, corners moderately worn, boards and spine slightly faded, scattered light soiling to same; all edges trimmed; brown-yellow endpapers; gutter split at half-title, with half-title starting; pp. 135-156 slightly proud; contemporary gift inscription on first flyleaf; small contemporary bookseller's ticket in top corner of front paste-down; small bookseller's ticket at bottom of rear paste-down; scattered spotting to text; scattered small and faint dampstaining in fore-edge and top corner of leaves at rear; in quarter blue morocco slip case and chemise. Book-plate of William E. Simon and Carol Simon on interior front flap of chemise. BAL 3369; Johnson, pp. 27-30; Grolier, American 100 79; Peter Parley to Penrod 43 

A handsome and unsophisticated first American edition, first printing of Mark Twain's classic semi-autobiographical story of boyhood. The first novel by Twain written without a co-author, Tom Sawyer followed the first English edition by six months. Along with Huckleberry Finn, "these books let fresh air into the minds of parents who had shut the door on their own childhood, and they will be classics the world over as long as there are boys.” (Grolier)