CURIOUS DREAM; And Other Sketches. Selected and Revised by the Author

London: George Routledge and Sons, [1872]. Very Rare First Edition. With all first issue points that are verifiable. Small 8vo, handsomely bound in three-quarter brown morocco over marbled paper covered boards, the spine with raised bands gilt ruled, gilt lettered in two compartments. 150 pp. A fine copy, beautifully preserved, clean and fresh and the binding tight and strong. Endleaves replaced during the rebinding process. RARE FIRST EDITION. A very elusive book. The first printing is identifiable by several points: it must have the Bradbury, Evans imprint on the verso of the title-page and on the final page of text, blank endleaves and a final blank leaf all without ads. There must be no statement by Twain on the title page relative to the authorization of Routledge as London publisher, the publisher's name must not be followed by "Limited", and the publisher's address must be "The Broadway, Ludgate" and not "The Broadway, Ludgate Hill". The book was originally issued as a "yellowback" in very fragile glazed yellow boards and copies extant in the original bindings are extremely rare. As here, the blank or printed end-leaves will not have survived due to the rebinding, so we cannot confirm this point of the bibliographical information cited above. A title-page ownership signature and date "1868?" is present. The book was published in May 1872.
A very scarce Twain volume, with only one copy of the first edition turning up at auction in over twenty years. Of the four copies cited by Blanck, in various institutional collections, including Yale and the New York Public Library, all are reprints.