Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer's Comrade) by TWAIN, Mark [pseudonym of Samuel Langhorne CLEMENS] (1835-1910)

New York, NY: Charles L. Webster and Company, 1885. [Literature] FIRST EDITION, earliest state of the cloth issue, now finely rebound in full green morocco, with the original cloth covers preserved at rear. Large octavo (22 x 18cm), pp.366. Illustrated throughout. Binding features gilt titles, and raised bands to spine, inner gilt dentelle, top edge gilt, black endpapers. With the following issue points confirming this as one of the initial cloth copies: p.9; (Ch.VI of Contents) 'Huck Decided' for 'Huck Decides'. p.13: the illustration captioned 'Him and another Man' is listed, incorrectly, as at p.88; p.57: the eleventh line from the bottom reads 'with the was' not 'with the saw' p.161: lacks the signature mark 11 at the bottom of the page. In addition, the portrait frontispiece has the tablecloth, or scarf, clearly visible. The contentious 'bulging fly' plate (p.283) was only included in publisher's leather and is therefore not pertinent to cloth copies. Internally clean, externally unmarked. A fine copy of a rare printing. Following the classic 'boy's own' adventures of the promising young gent Tom Sawyer, Twain here attempts a more mature, somewhat darker picture of a less privileged American childhood on the mighty Mississippi. Regarded by many as a cornerstone of American literature, it confronts issues such as slavery in a sympathetic yet humorously sardonic tone which belonged to Twain alone.