53. Clemens, Samuel L.The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer. Hartford: American Publishing Company,1876. Octavo (8.25 x 6.5 in.; 212 x 164mm). Brown cloth with brown leather spine and corners gilt, all edges gilt; internally fresh with four pages of advertisements (one leaf with skillful repair to vertical tear.

First U.S. edition, second printing, BAL’s issue A, printed on laid paper throughout, with the important point of 1875 printed on the copyright page, and 1876 on the title page. The first printing (5,000 copies) was published the same day as the second printing (also 5,000 copies), so even those who arrived at their bookshops at the crack of dawn on the day of publication had only a 50% chance of getting a first printing. The American edition was published around the beginning of December 1876, preceded by the London edition published in June the same year. Mark Twain had moved to Hartford to work with the publisher Elisha Bliss, Jr. of the American Publishing Company. At the time, Hartford was a publishing center with twelve publishers, and the town had the highest per-capita income of any city in the United States. Tom Sawyer proved such a success that Clemens was able to hire Tiffany to supervise the redecoration of his Hartford house. It also inspired him, somewhat less successfully, to found his own publishing house, Charles L. Webster and Company, which had success with its first two publications, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, but went bankrupt by 1894.

Reference: BAL 3369. $2,000 - $3,000