Exceptionally Rare Presentation Copy
Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
Hartford: The American Publishing Company, 1876.
Full Description:
TWAIN, Mark. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Hartford: The American Publishing Company, 1876.
First edition. Inscribed on the front free endpaper within a year of publication: "To Mr. Bartlett from the Author. Oct 1877." The recipient is presumed to be Hartford Republican publisher Matthew Henry Bartlett (1833 – 1914), a friend of Twain's who built the Bartlett Tower (now known as the Heublein Tower) on Connecticut’s Talcott Mountain in 1867. The tower and its sprawling grounds housed a restaurant, a pavilion for dancing and social events, and a carriage house. Twain and his close friend Joseph Twichell (1838 – 1918) often made the eight-mile hike from downtown Hartford to Bartlett Tower when the weather was warm. “Twain’s and Twichell’s walks and conversations were an important part of the men’s friendship throughout the 1870s and 1880s and they often referred to them in their correspondence. On one such walk Twichell suggested Twain ‘hurl’ his Mississippi reminiscences into a magazine, which ultimately led to Life on the Mississippi” (Colebrook Historical Society). Twain and Twichell also made Bartlett’s Tower a destination with their families: in 1880, Twichell wrote in a letter to Twain, “If this divine weather holds, we Twichells...propose to kick leaves to the Tower Saturday. If you will join us we shall have all the better a time. I think we will telephone Bartlett to make a ready lunch.” Twain commemorated his connection with Bartlett with several presentation copies inscribed throughout his career, including the present copy of Tom Sawyer and an edition of his Sketches New and Old (1875).
In David Randall's book, Dukedom Large Enough, Randall discusses this particular copy at the Walter Chrysler sale, and states that the inscribed leaf was inserted into this first printing from a later issue of Tom Sawyer (Randall, p. 216). According to BAL there were a total of 28,959 copies issued by the end of 1879 (two years after the inscription). The book that the inscribed leaf came from would have come from one of the early printings, issued within the same year of the publication date, December 8, 1876. Were it from a later year, Randall would have said a "later edition" rather than a "later issue". There is only one known presentation copy of the first printing of Tom Sawyer: a copy inscribed to C. W. Stoddard in 1877. The copy was purchased by J.K. Lilly, founder of the Lilly Library, in the 1930s.
Provenance: Walter Chrysler sale (Parke Bernet 1954); Mrs. Charles Englehard (Christies 2005). The book seemed in fairly rough shape at the Chrysler sale and then showed fairly extensive restoration in 2005, including recasing the book, repairs to the spine and inner hinges, backing the inscribed leaf, repairs to the half-title, and replacing leaf xv-xvi from a different copy. Publisher's full blue cloth. Boards and spine stamped in black and gilt. Octavo (8 3/8 x 6 1/2 inches; 214 x 165 mm). Housed in an early full morocco slipcase with chemise.
One of the classic American novels, Twain’s bildungsroman follows the adventures of Tom Sawyer – and his friend Huck Finn – in St. Petersburg, Missouri. Told with Twain’s characteristic and unmatchable wit and humor, it would become his bestselling book and its sequel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, is arguably the greatest American novel of all time. “Mr. Samuel Clemens has taken the boy of the Southwest for the hero of his new book...and has presented him with a fidelity to circumstance which loses no charm by being realistic in the highest degree, and which gives incomparably the best picture of life in that region as yet known to fiction” (contemporary Atlantic Monthly review).
The Letters of Mark Twain and Joseph Hopkins Twichell (2017), p. 103. Matthew Henry Bartlett obituary, Hartford Courant (December 15, 1914).
BAL 3369.
HBS 69398.
$65,000.
Price: $65,000.00
Item #69398