Fine Printed Books & Manuscripts, Including Americana

8vo. Original blue-gray boards with olive gilt-lettered paper label on spine, uncut. Provenance: Samuel Clemens; Albert Bigelow Paine (1861-1937), American author and biographer and Twain's literary executor (inscription on limitation to:); John Sanborn Phillips (1861-1949), American magazine publisher and founder of McClure's Magazine (presentation inscription); John Christian Gerber (1908-2003), Mark Twain and English professor (bookplate).

FROM MARK TWAIN'S OWN LIBRARY.

FIRST EDITION, LIMITED ISSUE, number 143 of 250 copies, second issue as usual with p.131 a cancel. PRESENTATION COPY, INSCRIBED BY TWAIN'S LITERARY EXECUTOR, ALBERT PIGELOW PAINE, TO MAGAZINE PUBLISHER JOHN S. PHILLIPS on limitation page, dated 8 February 1917.

What is Man? was intended as a grand summation of Twain's personal philosophy, however due to concerns chiefly voiced by Twain's daughters that publishing the work under his own name would damage his reputation, he opted to have it anonymously published in a run of 250 copies which were then sent directly to his home to be distributed by Twain to close friends and family only. It is estimated that by the time of his death, four years later, only eight copies had been distributed.

Following Twain's death in 1910 his friend and literary executor, Albert Bigelow Paine, is believed to have taken possession of the remainder of the books and would distribute them to close friends, among them magazine publisher John S. Phillips, also a friend of Twain's and who published a number of his works in McClure's, including excerpts from the diary Twain kept during his global lecture tour which were later collected in Following the Equator. A trade edition retaining the original text of the 1906 De Vinne printing was published in London in 1910, and an expanded American edition in 1917, which comprised numerous essays by Twain, with the present volume presented as the title work. BAL 3490; McBride, p.222.