Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer's Comrade). by TWAIN, Mark - 1885: With one hundred and seventy-four illustrations.

New York: Charles L. Webster and Company,, 1885. A fresh copy, in bright cloth Square octavo. Original green pictorial cloth blocked in black and gilt, titles to spine and front cover in gold and black. Housed in a green flat-back cloth box by the Chelsea Bindery. Photogravure frontispiece of Karl Gerhardt's portrait bust of Clemens, 173 text illustrations after E. W. Kemble. Contemporary pencilled ownership inscription dated 1885 to head of front free endpaper. A little rubbing and couple of tiny spots of wear to spine ends and tips, front inner hinge with neat superficial tissue repair and a couple of tiny splits, book block sound and tight, short closed tear to head of rear free endpaper. A very good, fresh copy in bright cloth. First US edition, first printing. Only three substantive changes were introduced after the first printing: at p. 13 the erroneous page reference "88" was changed to "87"; at p. 57, 11 lines from the bottom the misprint "with the was" was corrected to "with the saw"; and at p. 9 the misprint "Decided" was corrected to "Decides" (this last change overlooked by Johnson, Blanck et al.) These are the only points to distinguish between the first two printings, and our copy has all three in first state. The first printing of 30,000 copies was done using electrotype plates, produced simultaneously on different presses, hence minor variations within the first printing due to damaged plates. The frontispiece is in the first state with the table cloth visible and unsigned on the finished edge of the bust, but this was separately printed and inserted in copies at random, and so has no bearing on priority. Copies were issued in leather bindings (sheep or three-quarters morocco), in blue cloth for those who wanted it uniform with Tom Sawyer and, as here, in green cloth. There is no priority between them: all were first available to the public on the same day in February 1885. At some stage it was realised that the Uncle Silas illustration on p. 283 had been mischievously tampered with. In this copy, the illustration is in the second (or arguably third) state, with the changes removed. BAL 3415; Grolier, 100 American, 87; Johnson, pp. 43-50; Kevin MacDonnell, "Huck Finn among the Issue-Mongers," Firsts; The Book Collector's Magazine, Volume 8, Number 9 (September 1998), pp. 28-35.