Mark Twain, MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES, 1st/1st/1875

This is the rare first state of the first edition of Mark Twain’s delightful collection of wit and wisdom, MARK TWAIN’S SKETCHES, NEW AND OLD, published in 1875 by the American Publishing Co., Hartford, CT. In this book Mark Twain has collected many of his already published shorter pieces, but also some pieces previously unpublished. There is no rhyme or reason to their order, as one might expect of Mark Twain, but they take us from one seemingly unrelated piece like Journalism in Tennessee to another, like The Story of a Bad Little Boy, to another, like A Medieval Romance, with the curious logic created by his ever sharp wit and his ability to see through things on the surface to their core. His earlier Jumping Frog follows a piece on Political Economy that makes the Jumping Frog exactly the right sequel! If there was a collection that revealed to us the many facets of this great man, this book is it! The double printing of the footnote on p. 119 and again on p. 120, as well as the inclusion of “From “Hospital Days””, and its retraction because it was not written by Mark Twain himself on an erratum sheet laid in to the same page, make this clearly the scarce first state of Sketches. This copy has its original blue binding with its black and gilt impressed design and lettering, and the gilt still retains some of its luster even though the book shows some wear. This copy has been quite expertly rebacked with the original spine attached to the new cloth spine in a way that makes it hard, at first, to see that the book as a new spine. It also has new pastedowns together with their attached free end paper. Everything else in the book is original, and the condition of the pages and the illustrations is very good with no marks, tears, folds, or fox marks to be found.  They are all in quite remarkably good condition. So – if you collect the works of Mark Twain, and you don’t have his Sketches, this is as good a restoration of the original as you will find, and at a price well below what a perfect original would cost. The high bidder pays postage and insurance. While ordinarily any form of payment for this item would be ok, eBay requires that payment be made with via PayPal. Payment must be made within 10 days of the close of the auction.