Life on the Mississippi

Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1883. Very Good. First edition, mixed state of this important work by Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835 - 1910). Known by the pen name Mark Twain, he was an American writer, humorist, and essayist. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced", with William Faulkner calling him "the father of American literature." Twain's other novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884),with the latter often called the "Great American Novel". He also wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) and Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894) and cowrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) with Charles Dudley Warner. The novelist Ernest Hemingway claimed that "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn." [Wikipedia] Life on the Mississippi, published in 1883, is Mark Twain's memoir and travelogue about his experiences as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River before the Civil War, blending personal anecdotes, historical facts, and humorous observations. The book details his youthful ambition to become a pilot, his training under a seasoned captain, and his later return to the river as a passenger, reflecting on the river's transformation and the passing of the steamboat era. It's considered a classic of American literature, known for its vivid prose, humor, and its connection to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. With more than 300 black and white illustrations.

Number 3411 in the Bibliography of American Literature. Bound in the publisher's original brown cloth with gilt titling to the spine. Front cover has a stylized layout of the title and and author name printed in black ornamental boxes. Cover also has a gilt illustration of a worker sittining by the river. Binding has rubbing, chips to the spine, and lightly worn corners. With the called for gray endpapers, with those on the front having light stains and the bookplate of a previous owner with the last name Gimbrede. Light cracking to the hinges but text block is firm. Some exposure to the hinge at pages 352-353. Interior pages are generally clean and legible. Intermediate state B, with illustration on page 441 missing, as is the tailpiece. The caption on page 443 is correctly labeled "The St. Louis Hotel." A quite nice copy of this book in very good condition. 624 pages including the four appendixes. LIT/031726.