About this Item
The Definitive Edition, number 73 of 1,024 sets signed by the author as "Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain" and by his friend and biographer, Albert Bigelow Paine. This luxuriously bound set additionally has one manuscript leaf from The Gilded Age (1873) and a signed autograph letter addressed to Clemens's publishers tipped into the front of Volume I. The manuscript leaf is from the final part of Chapter 10. The letter is dated 21 August 1897 and written at Weggis, the Swiss village where Clemens spent this summer. It is addressed to "C & W", likely Chatto and Windus, and discusses a set of proofs, referring to a passage describing "the voyage in India all the way to Africa". He asks "has Bliss settled on a day for you to issue in England & if so, what is it?". The narrative he mentions appears to relate to Following the Equator, which was published as More Tramps Abroad in Britain on 25 November of that year. The autographed blank bound into the front of Volume I was signed by Clemens "in 1906 in anticipation of the present Definitive Edition of his works", as specified on the page opposite, which was signed by Paine. These autograph leaves had been recently discovered in Harper's vaults. The rare book seller Gabriel Wells purchased the rights from Collier and Son to a 35-volume set of Twain's works for $200,000. His deluxe edition utilizes many of the original illustrations and engraved portrait frontispieces of Mark Twain that had been used in the 1899 autographed edition, although the artists were not credited. The edition is printed on Old Enfold paper by Plimpton Press of Norwood, Massachusetts, with a circular "Mark Twain / Samuel Clemens" watermark. In 1925, Paine's two-volume Autobiography of Mark Twain was added to the set, bringing the total to 37 volumes. This made it the most extensive uniform edition of Twain's works ever produced. BAL 3691. 37 vols, octavo. Portrait frontispieces to each vol. and plates throughout with tissue guards captioned in red, occasional illustrations to text, title pages printed in red and black. Publisher's deluxe green crushed morocco, spines lettered in gilt, gilt tolling to compartments and outer boards enclosing gilt central floral design with red morocco onlay petals, doublures with many gilt rolls to wide green morocco turn-ins enclosing purple morocco central panel framed with richly gilt floral design, cream moiré silk flyleaves, top edges gilt, fore and bottom edges uncut, white bookmarker. Ownership inscription dated 1928 to verso of front free endpapers. Sunning to spines and occasionally to sides, corners a little bumped, silk endpapers lightly foxed, inner hinges cracked in a several vols but firm. A handsome set.
Seller Inventory # 184013
Contact seller
Report this item
