The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Hartford, Conn: The American Publishing Company, 1876. First edition. Very Good +. Square octavo. Original blue cloth, decoratively stamped and lettered in gilt and black, peach coated endpapers. Frontispiece and numerous wood-engraved text illustrations by True Williams and others, 4-page publisher's advertisements at end, versos of half-title and preface blank. A Very Good copy with some restoration to the cloth at the spine ends and corners. Internal contents are generally clean and fresh.

One of the classic American novels, Twain’s bildungsroman follows the adventures of Tom Sawyer – and his friend Huck Finn – in St. Petersburg, Missouri. (truncated) Told with Twain’s characteristic and unmatchable wit and humor, it would become his bestselling book and its sequel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, is arguably the greatest American novel of all time. “Mr. Samuel Clemens has taken the boy of the Southwest for the hero of his new book…and has presented him with a fidelity to circumstance which loses no charm by being realistic in the highest degree, and which gives incomparably the best picture of life in that region as yet known to fiction” (contemporary Atlantic Monthly review).

Provenance: Arthur Swann (1875-1959), auctioneer and bibliophile, with his bookplate on the front pastedown. Swann worked for booksellers in Liverpool and Leeds before emigrating to New York City in 1902 and joining the Anderson Auction Company. From 1933, he was a vice president of what became the Parke-Bernet Galleries. This copy was lot 54 in his sale at Parke-Bernet on 22 March 1960. Very Good +. (Inventory #: 7263)