THE INNOCENTS AT HOME by Twain Mark - n.d. [1872]

London: George Routledge & Sons, n.d. [1872]. Scarce First Edition, the British Copyright Edition and preceding the American edition of ROUGHING IT. WITH AUTOGRAPH PRESENTATION BY THE AUTHOR, MARK TWAIN. 12mo, rare in the original printer’s yellow stiff paper wrappers, lettered and decorated on the upper cover pictorially in colour, printed in black on the spine and rear cover, now protected in a very fine box of full brown morocco with inlays of red and blue morocco and gilt decorations. The box is designed to resemble a finely bound book and is in fact made out of one. 224pp. Well preserved for such a delicate and uncommon item. The original wrappers with some expected edge wear, and more so to the spine, with some loss of the paper at the spine. FIRST EDITION OF THE BRITISH COPYRIGHT ISSUE WITH AUTOGRAPH PRESENTATION BY MARK TWAIN, Twain has inscribed this copy on the titlepage with flare and boldness “Truly Yours, Mark Twain.” This scarce and delicate edition is the first printing of the final part of what would be published several days later in Hartford as “Roughing It”, it published in a very small number to secure the copyright. It also includes a very early reprint of "Mark Twain's Burlesque Autobiography."
“Roughing It” was in Twain’s words a ‘personal narrative and record of several years of variegated vagabonding...its object being to help the resting reader while away an idle hour rather than to afflict him with metaphysics or goad him with science.
There is an interesting episode in the history of the Far West about which no books had been written by anyone on the ground and in person...and this is the telling of the tale of the opening of the silver-mining fever in Nevada.’ There is much here--from the encountering of desperadoes on the plains to the encountering of Chinese in Virginia City--from the enjoyment of California’s women and the experience of an earthquake in San Francisco to the enjoyment of the frolicking girls of the Sandwich Islands and to the discovery of new places in the Hawaiian Islands.
A Mark Twain masterpiece, this is a wonderful and treasured creation of the great American writer.