Twain, Mark

A Pen Warmed-up in Hell

ISBN: 0060101172
New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1972. First Edition. Hardcover. "In the...years since the publication of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) Mark Twain has been neatly categorized as America's best-loved author and his major works as American classics; i.e. he has been safely diffused. The fact is that Mark Twain was never just an avuncular storyteller from Hannibal, Missouri. He was also a perceptive and radical critic of the less than honorable aspects of American life. He consistently used his gift for touching sore spots and funny bones to communicate his awareness of American imperialism, racism, and public and private hypocrisy. It is startling to realize that an essay such as "Grief and Mourning for the Night," on the U.S. takeover of the Philippines, is not part of a revisionist history but the voice of good ole Mark Twain damning American military intervention fifty years before Vietnam." (from front flap) A compilation of critical articles, essays & letters by Samuel Langhorne Clemens a/k/a Mark Twain (1835-1910), the canonical American author & humorist. Including some theretofore un- or unwidely published pieces. Twain's probing & prescient commentaries seemed freshly relevant & topical when this collection was published in the wake of the 1960s countercultural revolution, with the Vietnam War & its collateral consequences still raging. Edited & with an introduction by Frederick Anderson, a premier Twain scholar & archivist who was among the editors of the renowned Iowa Center for Textual Studies/ University of California Press Twain editions (see our item No.s 4256, 4336 et al.). Hardcover in clipped dust jacket, first edition as stated on copyright page, first printing/ issue with "0572" printed near lower right corner of jacket front flap. A production of the successor-publisher of many of Twain's works during his lifetime. An excellent Twain collectible with a unique contemporary twist. Book in fine condition with slight rubbing & scratching to front, back covers & spine; light wear & a bit of fading to edges & corners of same; very light browning to side & lower edges of text block (the former untrimmed as issued); light browning & several small spot-stains at upper edge of same. Interior fine with some light, mostly faint vertical blistering-wrinkling to blank black paste-downs & endpapers esp. rear paste-down; otherwise all-but-mint. Dust jacket near-fine with very light rubbing, browning & sparse spotting to front, esp. back covers, spine & flaps; light wear, tiny bumps & creases at thin edges & corners of same; slight loss of paper at upper left edge of front cover/ right spine-corner. Fine / Near Fine. [Item #4531]

Price: $40.00