Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain First Edition Census Poster, Book Lover Gift

ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN
A Bibliographic Census, 1884–2003

Matte poster — printed and shipped to you (unframed)

Charles L. Webster and Company published thirty thousand copies in New York on 18 February 1885, with 173 illustrations by E. W. Kemble and a frontispiece bust of the author by Karl Gerhardt. London had beaten them to it by ten weeks: Chatto & Windus published on 10 December 1884, to secure British copyright before the American sheets went out.

Thirty thousand copies is a great deal of press time. Webster ran them from electrotype plates on more than one press, and the sheets were mixed at the bindery. That produces the fact most listings get wrong — no copy is first state throughout.

FIRST-ISSUE POINTS

p. [9] "Huck Decided to Leave" for "Decides" — contents, ch. VI
p. [13] "Him and another Man" listed at 88 — the plate falls at 87
p. 57 "with the was" for "with the saw" — line 11 from the foot
p. 143 "Col." wanting its final l
p. 155 page number wanting its final 5 — the first of three states
p. 161 signature mark "11" absent
p. 283 the curved fly, leaf uncancelled

Only the first three are universally agreed. The rest are of undetermined priority, which is exactly what a mixed bindery produces and exactly what a good dealer will tell you before you ask.

The curved fly is the famous one and the most misunderstood. It is Kemble's engraving of Uncle Silas as originally printed — mild enough that you have to be looking for it — surviving on the uncancelled leaf in the publisher's leather bindings. It is not the notorious defacement. That was a separate state: an engraver, never identified, cut an obscene alteration into the plate. It was caught in late November 1884, while the run was still in the plant and nearly three months short of American publication. The plate was replaced and the printing corrected, which is why published copies are clean. The defaced illustration survives only in salesmen's prospectuses, two of them in institutional collections.

Then the census runs on. Norman Rockwell for the Heritage Press in 1940, his only Huckleberry Finn. Thomas Hart Benton for the Limited Editions Club in 1942 — 1,500 copies, illustrated and signed. Barry Moser's centennial edition from Pennyroyal Press on 18 February 1985, a hundred years to the day.

And in October 1990 the missing first half of the manuscript surfaced in an attic in Los Angeles, 665 leaves of it. James Fraser Gluck, a curator at Buffalo, had taken it home in 1887 to have it bound and died in 1897 without giving it back. The two halves were reunited on 28 July 1992.

A month after publication the Boston Transcript reported that the Concord library committee had found the book "rough, coarse and inelegant … more suited to the slums than to intelligent, respectable people." Twain wrote to his publisher the next day: "That will sell 25,000 copies for us sure."

PRODUCT FEATURES
• Museum-grade archival paper — long-lasting color, minimal yellowing
• Giclee printing for bright, fade-resistant color reproduction
• Matte finish reduces glare and keeps the type crisp
• Slight size tolerance +/- 1/16"
• For indoor use only
• Printed and shipped within the United States

CARE INSTRUCTIONS
• If the print gathers dust, wipe it gently with a clean, dry cloth

Also available as an instant digital download, if you would rather print it yourself: https://www.etsy.com/listing/4561703908/adventures-of-huckleberry-finn-mark

PLEASE NOTE
• This is a physical print, shipped to you — frame not included
• Screens vary, so colors may sit slightly differently in print

Points as recorded in Blanck, Bibliography of American Literature 3415. A census, not an appraisal.

From Revival Creek Books — rare books, and art for people who love them.