Equator by Mark Twain, Signed (2 results)

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. No Jacket. 1st Edition. Very Good/No Jacket. First Edition. Signed by Author. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. Fortieth thousand. Signature mark 11 on page 161. Missing any pages prior to title page. Single Hartford imprint on title page. Black & green title page. Blue with pictoral label depicting an elephant. Gilt lettering on spine. Hinges cracked. BAL3451. Size: 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. Signed by Author(s).

A UNIQUE COPY. 413 x 266 mm. (16 1/4 x 10 1/2"). 21 leaves. Very attractive light brown morocco by Donald Kelm, title tooled in blind on upper cover, raised bands on spine. Housed in a beige cloth clamshell box, cover and back with brown manuscript labels (with a few superficial scratches) by the calligrapher. WITH 24 ORIGINAL WATERCOLOR ILLUSTRATIONS BY ALAN JAMES ROBINSON (including one on a folding sheet). WITH VERY FINE CALLIGRAPHIC LETTERING BY SUZANNE MOORE in black ink and gold. SIGNED BY THE ARTIST AND CALLIGRAPHER on the colophon page; front pastedown with bookplate of James Strohn Copley; with a printed copy of the title page laid in. In mint condition. Featuring beautiful calligraphy and two dozen often playful watercolor illustration by two highly regarded artists, this is a very large, one-of-a-kind, and splendid production containing excerpts from Mark Twain's classic round-the-world narrative. Undertaken by the author in order to relieve himself from the financial burden of bad investments, Following the Equator is part travelogue and part social commentary, with the occasional piece of fiction mixed in for good measure. As the title of the present work suggests, the chosen excerpts all have to do with Twain's encounters with various animals, including a variety of birds (e.g., the Indian crow, vulture, magpie, and moa), as well as the cobra, chameleon, elephant, dingo, "ornithorhyncus" (platypus), and others. Each animal is vibrantly illustrated (sometimes more than once) with original watercolors that seem almost like portraiture, bringing something of the animals' personalities and unique traits to each image. These watercolors are the work of Alan James Robinson (b. 1950), an artist and printmaker with a reputation for consistently producing books that are both tasteful and delightful, that use the highest quality materials, that involve the work of various highly skilled collaborators, and that are generally in some way about animals. A member of the well-developed book-arts community in western Massachusetts, Robinson is a co-founder of the Cheloniidae Press, which was renamed The Press of the Sea Turtle in 1992. Suzanne Moore is a book and lettering artist whose well-regarded work earned her an invitation to collaborate with 14 other designers and calligraphers on the renowned St. John's Bible, an 11-year project, finished in 2011, that produced the first (gigantic) handwritten Bible since the beginning of the printing press. Her work is represented in many institutions across the U.S., including the Morgan, the Library of Congress, Harvard, and Yale. Robinson and Moore (who had previously worked together on The Fowl Alphabet at the Cheloniidae Press) were specially commissioned for this project by the James S. Copley Library in La Jolla, California, a private collection known especially for its outstanding array of American manuscripts (including a significant collection of Mark Twain material). Sotheby's offered much of the library's contents in 2010-11, bringing in more than $11 million over the course of eight sales. Signed.