Roughing It.

TWAIN, Mark. [Samuel L. Clemens].

$30,000.00

Item Number: 133025

Hartford: American Publishing Company, 1874.

Early printing of Twain’s first semi-autobiographical work of travel literature, essentially a prequel to The Innocents Abroad. Octavo, bound in three quarter morocco with gilt titles to the spine, fully illustrated by eminent artists with wood engravings throughout. Association copy, inscribed by Mark Twain on the fly-leaf, “For Mrs. P. T. Barnum with kindest wishes of Samuel L. Clemens Oct. 1875.” The recipient, Nancy Fish, was the second wife of American showman P. T. Barnum. Twain and Barnum were, by various accounts, friends, mutual admirers and rivals. After visiting Barnum’s American Business Museum in New York City as a teenager, Twain criticized it as “one vast peanut stand” yet upon the opening of Barnum’s Hippodrome in 1875, he remarked, “I hardly know which to wonder at most—its stupendousness, or the pluck of the man who has dared to venture upon so vast an enterprise. I mean to come to see the show,— but to me you are the biggest marvel connected with it.” He alluded to Barnum frequently in both his published works and private correspondence, and although he received many invitations from Barnum to dine in New York, he always declined. Barnum even proposed that the two collaborate on an anthology of “queer literature” based on letters he received from strangers hoping to join his circus, but Twain expressed little interest in the project. In 1867, Twain published “Barnum’s First Speech in Congress”, a satire of Reconstruction politics that painted Barnum as a ruthless exploiter of the performers he employed. Twain referred to the work as a “spiritual telegraph” delivered “to [him] in advance from the spirit world” and was certain that Barnum would never be elected to high office. Barnum was married to Charity Hallett from 1829 until her death in 1873, and they had four children. In 1874, a few months after his wife’s death, he married Nancy Fish, his friend’s daughter who was 40 years his junior. They were married until 1891 when Barnum died of a stroke at his home. He was buried in Mountain Grove Cemetery, Bridgeport, which he designed himself. In very good condition. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box. An outstanding association copy.

Dedicated to Twain's mining companion Calvin H. Higbie, Roughing It follows the travels of young Mark Twain through the Wild West during the years 1861–1867. After a brief stint as a Confederate cavalry militiaman, Twain joined his brother Orion on a stagecoach journey west. The book also chronicles many of Twain's other early adventures including a visit to Salt Lake City, gold and silver prospecting, real-estate speculation, a journey to Hawaii, and his beginnings as a writer.