The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Hartford, Conn: The American Publishing Company, 1876. 2nd Printing. Very Good +. Second printing. 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 (dated Dec. 1, 1876), half-title printed on the verso of the frontispiece. A Very Good+ copy overall. Minor wear to the spine ends and extremities, some discoloration to the spine and the rear board. A contemporary owner's gift inscription on one of the early blanks (dated Feb. 22, 1877). Rear paste-down and endpapers a bit wrinkled, (truncated) apparently from a dampstain. Text block clean and unaffected.

One of the classic American novels, Twain’s bildungsroman follows the adventures of Tom Sawyer – and his friend Huck Finn -- in St. Petersburg, Missouri. Told with Twain’s characteristic and unmatchable wit and humor, it would become his best-selling 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). Very Good +. (Inventory #: 6065)