ANTIQUES: BY THE BOOK

Written by 
Lesley Ann Beck
Photography by 
Gregory Cherin
A rare first edition of an American classic

 

In his 1935 memoir, The Green Hills of Africa, Ernest Hemingway famously wrote, “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. … It’s the best book we’ve had. All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.” 
 
 
Written by that quintessential American author, Mark Twain (aka Samuel L. Clemens), Adventures of Huckleberry Finn tells of Huck Finn’s journey down the Mississippi River on a raft with Jim, a runaway slave. Controversial when first published in 1885, Twain wrote the novel as a sharply satirical indictment of racism in the post-Civil War South. 
 
 
This rare first edition ($1,275) of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade) has a dark green cloth binding and an image of Huck stamped in black with black and gilt lettering on the cover. At 366 pages and with 174 illustrations by E.W. Kemble, it was published in New York by Charles L. Webster & Company, a firm owned by Clemens. [October, 2009]
 
Lesely Ann Beck is a senior editor of Berkshire Living.
 
THE GOODS
 
1395 Cold Spring Rd
Williamstown, Mass.

 

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