LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI by Twain, Mark - 1883

1883. With Over 300 Illustrations. London: Chatto & Windus, 1883. 32 pp ads dated December 1883. Original red cloth pictorially decorated in black. First Edition, which was published five days before the American one (and is considerably scarcer: although the number of English copies is not known, we would surmise that it might have been no more than one-tenth of the 50,000 American copies). LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI is really two books combined. The first twenty-one chapters are his early impressions of the great river..., written [and serialized] in 1875 [and] here reprinted, with the balance of the book, chapter twenty-two to the end, being his [new] story of his trip down the river as an honored guest. [Johnson]. This copy has a December 1883 ad catalogue (the book was actually published in May of that year); Blanck notes that copies have ads dated as late as 1889, and in fact we have had a copy with ads dated July 1893. This is a near-fine copy of this handsomely-bound book: the spine is slightly darkened and there is foxing on the page edges, but there is very little external wear or soil and the gilt remains bright. The original rear paste-down has a flaw (one inch by two inches near the hinge) that could only have occurred during the initial binding-up. Blanck 3410; McBride p. 86 (rebound -- the Hartford collections do not include a copy in original cloth, which is why this title is not pictured with the other Chatto & Windus Twain bindings on p. 154); Johnson p. 43.