# Is "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches" by Mark Twain a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches by Mark Twain (C.H. Webb, New York, 1867) is identified by: Twain's first book; BAL 3310. Confirmed: the C.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- Twain's first book
- 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 the folio on page 21; an unbroken "e" in "life" in the last line of page 66; an unbroken "i" in "this" in the last line of page 198
- Publisher imprint reads C.H. Webb, New York

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Mark Twain |
| Publisher | C.H. Webb, New York |
| Year | 1867 |
| True first | UK edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | Twain's first book |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
Twain'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 the folio on page 21; an unbroken "e" in "life" in the last line of page 66; an unbroken "i" in "this" in the last line of page 198. Later impressions show that type broken or worn. The cloth was bound up simultaneously in several colours (green, terra cotta, brown, lavender, blue, purple, maroon and red are recorded) with NO established priority — green accounts for more than half the printing and brown for roughly a tenth. The gilt frog's position is disputed and should be treated as a variant, not a proven point: Biblioctopus treats the gilt frog stamped centrally and vertically on the front cover, with a blind-stamped frog in the same position on the back, as the first binding (about 100 of the 1,000 copies), after which Webb moved it to the lower left at a 45-degree angle; other ABAA dealers state flatly that no priority has been established between the two placements. Because cloth colour and the ad leaf are both easily faked or supplied, the three unbroken-type points are the anchor.

## Is this the true first?
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 texts was revised by the author, though their compositors introduced errors. A London 1867 Routledge is therefore an unauthorised reprint, not a co-first.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
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 leaf or the frog stamp.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches* by Mark Twain a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-celebrated-jumping-frog-of-calaveras-county-and-other-sk
CC BY 4.0. Part of the Canonical First-Edition Points of Issue dataset (https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/api/first-edition-titles.json). Last reviewed 2026-07-04.