Mark Twain’s Letters.
PAINE, Albert Bigelow [Mark Twain; Samuel L. Clemens].
Mark Twain’s Letters.
First Edition of Albert Bigelow Paine's Mark Twain's Letters
New York and London: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1917.
$500.00
In Stock
Item Number: 150662
First limited edition of this seminal documentary collection on Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Octavo, two volumes, original publisher’s half-cloth with paper titles, frontispieces, illustrated throughout, with the original paper dust jackets. One of 350 copies. Each volume is fine in a very good dust jackets. Uncommon in the original jackets.
Mark Twain’s Letters, edited by Albert Bigelow Paine, is a foundational documentary collection that provides critical insight into Samuel Langhorne Clemens’s intellectual development, literary practice, and public persona. Compiled by Twain’s authorized biographer, the volume presents a carefully curated selection of correspondence that spans much of Twain’s adult life, illuminating his views on authorship, politics, publishing, and social ethics while also revealing the private wit and rhetorical precision that characterize his published work. Paine’s editorial approach, though shaped by early twentieth-century biographical conventions and occasional selectivity, played a significant role in establishing Twain as both a national literary figure and a complex historical personality.
