To The Person Sitting In Darkness.

TWAIN, Mark [Samuel L. Clemens].

Item Number: 95338

New York: Anti-Imperialist League, 1901.

First edition of Twain’s satiric essay first published in the North American Review in February 1901. Small octavo, original wrappers as issued. Ownership signature to the front panel. In very good condition. Housed in a custom cloth clamshell box. Rare.

Mark Twain was 'an outspoken critic of American involvement in the Philippines and China', and "one of the mammoth figures in anti-imperialism, and certainly the foremost anti-imperialist literary figure", having become in January 1901 a vice president of the Anti-Imperialist League of New York. He published this satiric essay in an effort to express his anti-imperialist views pertaining to the Boxer Uprising and its aftermath, the Boer War, and the Philippine–American War (Harris, 142; Emerson, 257).