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"CAMELOT -- Camelot," said I to myself. "I don't seem to remember hearing of it before. Name of the asylum, likely." FIRST EDITION, FIRST ISSUE (with "s" ornament on page 59) of Mark Twain's classic satire, one of the earliest examples of time travel in literature. "Here he is to the full the humorist, as we know him; but he is very much more, and his strong, indignant, often infuriate hate of injustice, and his love of equality, burn hot through the manifold adventures and experiences of the tale. What he thought about prescriptive right and wrong, we had partly learned in The Prince and the Pauper, and in Huckleberry Finn, but it is this last book which gives his whole mind. The elastic scheme of the romance allows it to play freely back and forward between the sixth century and the nineteenth century; and often while it is working the reader up to a blasting contempt of monarchy and aristocracy in King Arthur's time, the dates are magically shifted under him, and he is confronted with exactly the same principles in Queen Victoria's time. The delicious satire, the marvellous wit, the wild, free, fantastic humor are the colors of the tapestry, while the texture is a humanity that lives in every fibre." -William Dean Howells New York: Charles L. Webster
and Co., 1889. Octavo, original olive gilt-stamped pictorial cloth.
Split (but holding) between frontispiece and title; spine slightly
faded; front panel gilt bright and clean. A very handsome copy. $1900. |
