First edition, first issue of the satirical time travel fantasy, composed after Twain had read Malory's famous version of the legends of the knights of the Round Table.
Very good plus.
Price: $3,500.00
"You can't throw too much style into a miracle. It costs trouble, and work, and sometimes money; but it pays in the end."
An unusual entry into the time-travel novels of the 19th century, featuring a fantastical (that is, unexplained and natural) means of landing in another time rather than a mechanical (science fiction) means: like Irving's RIP VAN WINKLE and Bellamy's LOOKING BACKWARD (and later, Johnson's LIGHT AHEAD FOR THE NEGRO), the hero travels in time after a loss in consciousness. Here Hank travels backwards in time, rather than forward, into Arthurian England – where he uses his modern knowledge to play the part of a magician. From across the centuries Twain can use the time honored science-fiction tradition of distance, physical or temporal, to comment obliquely on the issues of his own contemporary world.
Read more: McBride, Mark Twain: A Bibliography, 124; Blanck, Bibliography of American Literature (BAL), 3429; MacDonnell, "Collecting Mark Twain: A History and Three New Paths," in Firsts Magazine.
New York: Charles L. Webster & Company, 1889. 8.25'' x 6.5''. Original green pictorial cloth stamped in gilt, black, and light blue, gilt-stamped spine. Floral patterned endpapers. Illustrated in black and white throughout. S-like ornament between "The" and "King" on page [59]; undamaged type on page 72. Publisher's ads at rear. xvi, 17-575, [1], [2] pages. Housed in custom quarter green goatskin slipcase and green cloth chemise. Contemporary ink owner stamp on fly leaf. Hinges skillfully repaired, faint shadow of bookplate removal on verso of front fly leaf with small expert repairs to two closed tears, sliver of dampstain to gutter of top edge of first few leaves, with shallow 1'' long chip on top edge of title page. Cloth remarkably fresh, unusually so: shows well.
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