Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: (Tom Sawyer's Comrade) by Twain, Mark - 1885-01-01

Charles L. Webster and Company, 1885-01-01. First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. Signed. Publisher's original 1/2 leather, with page edges, pastedowns, and endpapers all marbled. One of just 500 copies printed (Raptis Rare Books, internet article, March 2014) and comes with a copy of the infamous "priapic plate", one of 100 proof copies made by Merle Johnson from an original leaf from an unbound copy found in the collection of Willard S. Morse.///LAID in is a hand written response, declining an invitation, on a folded Quarry Farm labeled note, dated "Sept. 17/03", and SIGNED, "S. L. Clemens". (Quarry Farm was the home of Susan Langdon Crane, sister of Mark Twain's wife Olivia, and often the summer residence of the Twains. Mark Twain wrote, at least in part, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn while at Quarry Farm). The note sheet was created with a fold to yield 4 writing surfaces although this message is confined solely to the letterhead panel; The note was then manually folded, horizontally. It was written 5 weeks prior to the Twain family leaving for Italy and was penned during the last summer they spent together at Quarry Farm, as Olivia died in Italy the following June. ///CONDITION OF THE NOTE: Very good-near fine, with a touch of toning, faint soiling, two miniscule specks on the letterhead panel, the faint horizontal crease, and light peeling on the rear panel where it had been affixed to some other surface. ///CONDITION OF THE BOOK: The spine and corners have been professionally restored (corners still showing the bumped tips) and the marbled surfaces have some scratches and nicks. Interior condition problems: 1.) The pastedown/endpaper hinges have been reinforced, 2.) the front endpaper has a 1/8"x 1/4" upper corner chip, 3.) there is scattered light foxing on the front and rear the preliminary pages, 4.) leaves 3-18 have areas of (food?) staining heaviest on page 17 with bleeding back to the copyright page and finally vanishing on page 36, 5.) the bottom corner of page 23-24 has a 1/2"x7/8" chip. 6.) the rest of the text has occasional soiling, some perimeter stains, a few tipped corners, one dog-eared page, and most pages have light perimeter toning. ///ISSUE POINTS: The tissue guarded front plate is second state with no cloth visible under the bust. The title/copyright leaf is integral (lack of uniform opinion on this point), "Him and another man" is incorrectly listed at page 88 (instead of page 87 where it appears), page 57 has "with the was" on line 11 from the bottom, page 143 is missing the "l" in "Col." (which is part of the illustration at the top line of the text) and has the broken "b"in "body" on line 7, the final 5 of page 155 is lacking (again, lacks consensus), the illustration on page 283 is bound in with the noticeable curve on the fly of Silas Phelp's trousers, and the final leaf is blank. ///CONDITION OF THE PROOF PLATE: The plate is lightly toned and there are some creases, and a small hole (1/8" x 1/16") on the right edge; repaired on the verso with a small piece of tape. ///OVERALL: in spite of the aforementioned flaws, this is a very good and quite scarce 130 year old volume. Several of these leather bound copies are in university and library collections, while others have surely been destroyed or lost, leaving precious few for private collections.