Beschreibung:

CLEMENS, Samuel Langhorne (“Mark Twain”) (1835–1910). The Writings of… Hartford: American Publishing Co., 1899–1900. 22 volumes (of eventually 25; the last three volumes being published later in 1903 and 1907), 8vo. Engraved titles on india paper designed by Tiffany & Co. and etched by W.H.W. Bicknell, NUMEROUS ENGRAVINGS INCLUDING 15 SIGNED BY THEIR RESPECTIVE ARTIST, including: Karl Gerhardt Peter Newell, Charles N. Flagg, A.B. Frost, E.W. Kemble (the artist who illustrated the frontispiece and other illustrations in Huckleberry Finn and also in Puddin’Head Wilson), Dan Beard, et al. In the Huckleberry Finn volume, Karl Gerhardt who designed the marble bust of Twain that appears in the first edition, signs the frontispiece also of a bust of Twain designed by the artist. Original subscriber’s crushed olive morocco framed in gilt, 6 compartments with 5 raised bands, gilt–lettering and framing in compartments, top edges gilt, others uncut, gilt dentelles, marbled endpapers, stamp–signed by Haddon & Co. binders (spines uniformly sunned, occasional light rubbing at edges, Volume XIX dampstained at lower edge of covers mostly affecting the first half of the text block at lower margins, Volume XX upper cover mostly separated at joint, pale foxing or spotting throughout). Provenance: Maurice H. Connell (bookplate). LIMITED EDITION, number 53 of 512 copies of the “Autograph Edition” for subscribers SIGNED BY MARK TWAIN. THIS SET IS WITH AN ADDITIONAL INSCRIPTION FROM TWAIN TO THE PUBLISHER RICHARD S. PEALE ON THE LIMITATION IN VOLUME I, DATED 18 APRIL 1901. Peale was founder of the Chicago publishing firm R.S. Peale and Company (1875–1894) who distributed the famous 2–volume set Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant (1885–86) that was published by Mark Twain’s Webster and Company publishing house. They would also publish works by P.T. Barnum, Washington Irving, John A. Logan and Ignatius L. Donnelly. Richard S. Peale himself wrote a “Popular Compendium of Useful Knowledge” in 1890 which listed Mark Twain in its “Compendium of Biography” listing eminent historical personages. Volume I is also signed at the end of the Biographical Criticism by literary critic, writer and Twain’s friend Brander Matthews. Additionally signed by Charles Dudley Warner in Volume X (The Gilded Age) on the limitation. Warner was a friend of Mark Twain with whom he co–authored this novel with. THE RAREST AND MOST DESIRABLE OF ALL THE TWAIN SETS and exceedingly scarce to find a set inscribed to an associate of Twain. BAL 3456.