Mark Twain First Editions

• The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches — 1867 · C.H. Webb, New YorkTwain's first book; BAL 3310. 12mo (about 4.5 x 6.625 inches), 27 sketches; New York: C. H. Webb, 1867, with the American News Company as agents; 1,000 copies in the first printing. The first printing has a single advertisement leaf on yellow/cream-yellow paper inserted before the title leaf — later Webb impressions of the same setting lack it. Three unbroken-type points must all be present: an unbroken "1" in…. Confirmed: the C. H. Webb, New York, 1867 edition is the true first and the head of the Twain canon. There is no competing UK original — George Routledge & Sons, London, 1867 is a piracy that reprints the Webb text and was the first British appearance, and Hotten in turn reprinted the Routledge text in 1870; Routledge reprinted again in 1870 and reissued in 1872. Per the Mark Twain Project, none of the pirated…. Not applicable — the book predates book-club publishing. The reprint tells are (a) later Webb impressions of the same setting: no yellow advertisement leaf, and broken/worn type at pages 21, 66 and 198; and (b) the London piracies (Routledge 1867/1870/1872, Hotten 1870), identified by their own imprints. Beware supplied ad leaves and rebacked or resupplied cloth: verify the type points before accepting the ad….
• The Innocents Abroad — 1869 · American Publishing Co.US subscription first edition, American Publishing Co., Hartford, 1869 (BAL 3316). First-issue points: 1869 on both title and copyright pages; the double frontispiece; the last table-of-contents entry on page xviii reading 'Thankless Devotion - A Newspaper Valedictory'; 'XLI' on page 643; and the rear advertisements including the 'Personal History of Ulysses S. Grant' notice. Sold by subscription, so binding…. US true first, issued by subscription. This was Twain's first major book under his own name. Earliest copies show the 1869 dating on title and copyright leaves and the first-state contents and advertisement points noted above; because it was a subscription book, binding alone does not establish priority. Numerous later American Publishing Co. printings exist; reprints lack the first-state contents and advertisement points and may show altered or relocated illustrations.
• Roughing It — 1872 · American Publishing CompanyHartford: American Publishing Company, 1872, sold by subscription (BAL 3337). Dealers commonly cite these first-state points: on page 242, lines 20-21 read cleanly "premises -- said he / was occupying his"; page 156 has a capital "T" for "Trees" and reads "thirteenth" rather than the later-corrected "sixteenth"; page 330, line 23, has a capital "E" for "Eastern"; publisher's advertisements appear on page [592];…. Because the American Publishing Company kept the original stereotype plates in use for years, later printings continued to carry the same 1872 copyright notice even when actually printed decades afterward; a copyright page reading "1872" does not by itself establish a first printing -- only the textual points above, not the copyright date or binding color, identify true first-state sheets.
• Mark Twain's Sketches, New and Old — 1875 · American Publishing CompanyFirst edition, first issue (BAL 3364) is distinguished by a footnote on page 119 that is mistakenly repeated verbatim on page 120 (later states correct this by removing the duplicate), and by the presence, opposite page 299, of an inserted slip disclaiming Twain's authorship of the eleven-line piece 'From Hospital Days.' The second state lacks both the repeated footnote and the disclaimer slip. Square octavo, 320….
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer — 1876 · American Publishing CompanyFirst American edition points (BAL): the half-title, the inserted ads, the 'Tom Sawyer' frontispiece state, and the specific gatherings; first issue has the correct list of illustrations and the 'first state' binding in the period cloth. UK (Chatto & Windus, 1876) actually precedes the US by months; the US American Publishing 1876 is the canonical American first. Collectors prize the US first with correct BAL points. Later American Publishing printings and reprints alter the ads/plates; book-club and reprints lack the original cloth and BAL points.
• A Tramp Abroad — 1880 · American Publishing CompanyFirst-edition, first-issue textual points (BAL 3386) include 'fee' for 'feel' on page 37, '2oo' for '200' on page 46, 'spirting' for 'spurting' on page 414, and 'stuck' for 'stick' on page 465. The earliest state of the frontispiece is captioned simply 'Moses'; a later first-edition state retains the same textual points but changes the caption to 'Titian's Moses.' The book is illustrated throughout with 328….
• The Prince and the Pauper — 1881 · Dawson BrothersDawson Brothers of Montreal printed about 275 paper-covered copies in late November 1881 as part of Twain's bid for Canadian copyright, shortly before the Chatto & Windus London edition of December 1, 1881, which the trade customarily treats as the true first edition. The American edition, published by James R. Osgood in Boston on December 12, 1881 and issued by subscription, carries '1882' on the title page with…. The Chatto & Windus London edition of December 1, 1881 is the edition dealers customarily call the true first, published just ahead of the Osgood Boston edition of December 12, 1881 to secure British copyright. Dawson Brothers of Montreal separately printed roughly 275 copies in paper wrappers in late November 1881, earlier still, but only to support an ultimately unsuccessful attempt at Canadian copyright; this…. Later printings correct the three page 124/263/362 misprints and drop the Franklin Press imprint from the copyright page; a second-state binding, with the spine's center rosette set 1/16 inch below the fillet, is also recorded and should not be mistaken for the first state.
• Life on the Mississippi — 1883 · James R. Osgood & Co.US first edition, James R. Osgood & Co., Boston, 1883. The three classic first-state points are: the tailpiece on page 441 showing Mark Twain's head emerging from flames atop an urn (later suppressed at Mrs. Clemens's request as too morbid); the caption on page 443 reading 'The St. Louis Hotel'; and the uncorrected reading 'it it' on page 444. Illustrated, issued in publisher's pictorial cloth. US first (Osgood). The flaming-urn tailpiece on page 441 is the key earliest-state point. An intermediate state retains the page 441 tailpiece but corrects the page 443 caption to 'The St. Charles Hotel'; the latest state removes the tailpiece entirely. The contemporaneous Chatto & Windus London edition is a separate issue. Later printings lack the page 441 flaming-head tailpiece and correct the page 443 caption and the 'it it' typo; absence of the tailpiece is the principal reprint tell.
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn — 1885 · Charles L. Webster and CompanyAmerican first edition (Charles L. Webster, New York, 1885), first state — the three plate corrections made after the first printing are the decisive tells: (1) p. 9, list of illustrations, 'Decided' (corrected to 'Decides'); (2) p. 13, list of illustrations, the 'Him and another Man' plate referenced as facing p. 88 (corrected to 87); (3) p. 57, 11th line from the bottom, 'with the was' (corrected to 'with the…. Both editions are collected. The English edition (Chatto & Windus, London) was published in December 1884, roughly two months before the American (Webster, New York, February 1885) — so London has precedence by date; the American Webster is the edition collected for its elaborate first-state point system and as the first American edition. Look above all for the three uncorrected plate readings (p. 9 'Decided', p.…. Later states correct all three plate readings (to 'Decides', '87', 'with the saw'), re-engrave the p. 283 Uncle Silas plate, and repair the p. 155 page number; copies are frequently mixed-state. Corrected readings and the re-engraved plate indicate a later state, not the first.
• A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court — 1889 · Charles L. Webster & Co.US first (Webster, 1889), illustrated throughout by Dan Beard, in publisher's subscription cloth, gilt-stamped. The accepted first-state point is the presence of a small S-like ornament within the caption on page 59 (between the words THE and KING); the second state lacks that ornament. Issued without the half-title on the recto of the frontispiece. The UK Chatto & Windus edition appeared the same year under the…. US first (Webster) and UK first (Chatto & Windus, as 'A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur'), both 1889; precedence is close and is established by imprint. The Dan Beard illustrations are integral to the first. Later printings and reprints lack the Webster subscription cloth and the first-state caption ornament on page 59; the second state already drops the small S-like ornament.
• The American Claimant — 1892 · Charles L. Webster & CompanyFirst edition points require matching 1892 dates on both the title page and copyright page, with no printing statement indicating a later impression (BAL 3434). Collation runs [i]-xvi, 17-277pp with eight pages of publisher's advertisements at the rear. Bound in pale olive-green cloth with gilt lettering and pictorial stamping on the spine and front cover; illustrated throughout by Dan Beard.
• Pudd'nhead Wilson — 1894 · American Publishing CompanyPublished November 28, 1894, following serialization in The Century Magazine. The three BAL-recognized first-issue points are: the title page integrally bound into the gathering rather than on a stub; the frontispiece bearing Twain's facsimile autograph measuring 1-7/16 inches wide; and the sheets bulking 1-the printed price inches. Illustrations by F. M. Senior and C. H. Warren are printed in the margins rather…. The Chatto & Windus London edition (BAL 3441) reached print a few days before this American Publishing Company edition, making London the true point of first publication; American collectors and dealers nonetheless treat the Hartford printing described here (BAL 3442) as the standard first edition of the book.
• Tom Sawyer Abroad — 1894 · Charles L. Webster & CompanyThe American first edition (BAL 3440), limited to 1,000 copies, is illustrated with half-tone plates by Dan Beard and runs 219 pages plus advertisements. Two binding states are recorded on the spine, distinguished by the gap between the words 'Webster' and 'Twain': one measures about 5 the printed price inches between them, the other about 5 the printed price inches, with no priority established between the two.…. The Webster (US) and Chatto & Windus (UK) editions were issued at essentially the same time in April 1894, and no priority has been established between them. The two are not textually identical: the Webster edition follows the St. Nicholas Magazine serialization, which the magazine's editor had trimmed for a juvenile readership, while the Chatto & Windus edition was set from a fuller Clemens typescript.
• Following the Equator — 1897 · American Publishing CompanyThe American first edition collates 712 pages, bound in blue cloth with gilt spine titling and decoration and an inset color decoration of an elephant on the front board; it carries a photographic frontispiece of Twain and numerous in-text and full-page illustrations by eleven artists and photographers. BAL 3451 notes a collector preference for copies with a single Hartford imprint on the title page, but because…. The Hartford, American Publishing Company edition titled Following the Equator is the edition collected under that title. The Chatto & Windus London edition, issued the same year under the different title More Tramps Abroad, is a textually distinct edition rather than a straightforward reprint, and its exact priority relative to the American edition is not firmly established in the record.

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