Life On The Mississippi.

TWAIN, Mark (Samuel Langhorne Clemens).

Item Number: 37049

Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1883.

First edition, first state of this provocative portrait of the great Mississippi River with tailpiece of Twain in flames on p.441 still present and caption on p.443 corrected to read “The St. Charles Hotel.” Octavo, original brown cloth, gilt titles and tooling the spine and front panel, all edges gilt. In very good condition with reinforcement to the front and rear hinges and rubbing to the extremities.

An invaluable companion to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Life on the Mississippi is Mark Twain's inimitable portrait of 'the great Father of Waters'. Part memoir, part travelogue, it expresses the full range of Twain's literary personality, and remains the most vivid, boisterous and provocative account of the cultural and societal history of the Mississippi Valley, from 'the golden age' of steamboating to the violence wrought by the Civil War.