8vo. Original red cloth stamped in white and green (mild darkening along front top edge); DUST JACKET (horizontal tear with loss to upper portion of front and back, not affecting letters).

FIRST EDITION, IN THE RARE DUST JACKET. Eve's Diary was originally published in the Christmas 1905 issue of Harper's Magazine and is believed to have been written as a posthumous love letter to Twain's wife, Livy, who had died in June of the previous year. When first published in book form, the book attracted controversy over its illustrations by Lester Ralph depicting Eve in the nude, with a library in Charlton, Massachusetts, going so far as to ban the book. Twain was amused by the controversy, writing to his friend Harriett E. Whitmore that "when a Library expels a book of mine and leaves an unexpurgated Bible lying around where unprotected youth and age can get hold of it, the deep unconscious irony of it delights me and doesn't anger me." BAL 3489.