Twain, Mark

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (Three Editions)

ISBN: 0520036212;0195101
New York, NY; Berkeley, CA: Charles L. Webster & Co.; The Iowa Center for Textual Studies/ University of California Press; Oxford University Press, 1891; 1979; 1996. Early Edition; First Editions Thus. Hardcovers. Three rare editions of a favorite work of early science fiction, fantasy & allegory by Samuel Langhorne Clemens a/k/a Mark Twain (1835-1910), the canonical American humorist & author: (1) A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Charles L. Webster & Co., 1891. Originally published only two years earlier (1889) by this same publisher, substantially identical to the first & second printings found in McBride, pgs. 124-129. We believe this is probably the third printing, & that this edition was issued without any dust jacket. Hardcover in green cloth covers & spine with embossed letters & colored illustration on front cover, embossed letters & decorations on spine. Profusely illustrated throughout. (2) A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, published for the Iowa Center for Textual Studies by the University of California Press, 1979. As noted on front flap, this novel "...is one of the most enduringly popular of Mark Twain's books and one of the most controversial. From the day it was published, in 1889, the confrontation it depicts between the populist, materialist ethic embodied in the Yankee and the feudal, romantic values of Arthur's court has provoked a wide variety of interpretations." Edited by Bernard L. Stein & with an introduction by Henry Nash Smith, this door-stopper production of over 800 pages features vast appendices of notes, lists etc. The text has been painstakingly reconstructed & restored to Twain's own specifications with reference to a Talmud's-worth of contemporary documents, & all the illustrations found in (1) are included. A handsome academic production, hardcover in unclipped dust jacket, first edition thus. (3) A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Oxford University Press, 1996. As stated in Editor's Note, "The Oxford Mark Twain consists of twenty-nine volumes of facsimiles of the first American editions of Mark Twain's works, with an editor's foreword, new introductions, afterwords, notes on the texts, and essays on the illustrations in volumes with artwork." This volume in the series reproduces the first edition published by Charles L. Webster & Co. referred to (& exactly duplicated) in (1) above. Edited by Shelley Fisher Fishkin, with introduction by the great American author Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (arguably a Twain inspiree-progeny) & afterword by Louis J. Budd. As noted on front flap, this novel "...is one of Twain's best-loved tales. A pioneering work of science fiction, it vibrates with slapstick comedy and serious social commentary as well. In this complex and ambitious tour de force, an inventive nineteenth-century resident of Hartford named Hank Morgan travels back in time to sixteenth-century England where he tries to introduce modern technology and political ideas." Hardcover in unclipped dust jacket, first trade edition thus, first printing as indicated by number sequence on copyright page. Three collectible & desirable editions of the classic achievement of imagination by the immortal Mark Twain- a very early duplicate of the very first edition & two with extensive, helpful academic scholarship. (1) in relatively good-to-near fine unrestored condition with moderate rubbing & scratching to front, back covers & spine; moderate wear with some loss of green color & moderate fraying of cloth to edges & corners of same; small smudge at blank lower area of front cover; series of small, shallow vertical blisters to cloth at blank lower area of back cover; moderate browning, rubbing & scratching to edges of text block with faded library stamp at upper & lower edges of same. Interior also relatively good-to-near-fine with vintage library pouch & list affixed to blank front paste-down & endpaper respectively; library stamp above noted list; moderate browning mostly at blank margins of page leaves; sparse spotting to rear paste-down & endpaper; loosening of hinge-edges between paste-downs & endpapers with mostly closed tears, creases (but binding intact with no loose page leaves). An extra handling fee will be added for shipping due to the weight of this bundle. Good- Near Fine; Very Fine / Near Fine; Very Fine. [Item #4336]

Price: $100.00