ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN

New York: Charles L. Webster and Company [but, The First Edition Library], 1885 [but ca. 1990]. First Edition, First Issue, Facsimile Edition. With 174 black and white illustrations by E.W. Kemble. 8vo, publisher’s original green cloth elaborately decorated in gilt and black on the covers and spine as in the first edition, protected with a decorated slipcase as issued. 366 pp. A mint copy of the facsimile of the true first issue with the recto of the frontispiece blank, pages xii, xiii and xvi the only numbered preliminary pages, printed on wove paper and bulking correctly for the first issue. With the half-title. AN IMPORTANT FIRST EDITION, IN EXACT FACSIMILE. The copyright notice is dated 1884; p. [13] with the illustration captioned "Him and another Man listed at p. 88; p. 57 with "saw" spelled incorrectly; p. 283 with the uncorrected engraving; p. 155 has the final five replaced; p. 161 is lacking a signature mark, as usual. The frontis portrait with the imprint of the Heliotype Printing Company and with the tablecloth or scarf visible.
Along with Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn is considered the stepping stone to modern American literature. And along with Tom Sawyer, for the first time, the hero of the novel was a boy. These books are landmarks and Hemingway often offered his opinion that the modern novel would have been impossible without them. With Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and Melville’s Moby Dick, they provide us with a view of America transcending its past and beginning its future.