FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR

1897. A Journey around the World. Hartford: The American Publishing Company, 1897. Original blue cloth with front cover plate and gilt-decorated spine.

First Edition, with the title page in the first and usual state (with no mention of McClure). This was Twain's travel narrative (beginning in Vancouver and ending in Cape Town, by way of Australia and India), illustrated by eleven artists of the day, with which he had "hoped to make good the tangled finances of the ill-fated publishing firm, Charles L. Webster & Company, of which Mark himself was the company" [Johnson]. It was Twain's last travel book, and it was also the last of his books to be sold on a subscription basis. In this copy, the signature mark "11" is apparently not present on page 161 -- but under a magnifying glass, it does appear that the digits were once there. (This is not an issue point, as priority is unknown, but most copies do have the "11".) This is an attractive, near-fine copy (the slightest of rubbing at the extremities, one inch of one endpaper cracked) -- housed in an attractive open-back cloth case with three title labels. Blanck 3451; Johnson pp 65-68.