Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer's Comrade).; Scene: The Mississippi Valley. Time: Forty to Fifty Years Ago

New York: Charles L. Webster and Company, 1885. First American Edition, First Issue. Hardcover. Good. E. W. Kemble. 366, [2] pages. One Hundred and Seventy-for Illustrations (per title page). Some endpaper discoloration. Some cover/corner wear, and soiling. Pencil notation on fep and rep verso, and on Notice page. "Notice. Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. By Order of the Author per G. G. Chief of Ordnance." Also includes: Explanatory. In this book a number of dialects are used, to wit: the Missouri Negro dialect; the extremest form of the backwoods South-Western dialect; the ordinary "Pike-County" dialect; and four modified varieties of this last. The shadings have not been done in a hap-hazard fashion, or by guess-work; but pains-takingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity with these several forms of speech. I make this explanation for the reason that without it many readers would suppose that all these characters were trying to talk alike and not succeeding. The Author. Edward Winsor Kemble (January 18, 1861 - September 19, 1933), usually cited as E. W. Kemble, and sometimes referred to incorrectly as Edward Windsor Kemble, was an American illustrator. He is known best for illustrating the first edition of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He became the major political cartoonist for the New York Daily Graphic while receiving his only formal artistic training at the Art Students League of New York. His lively cartoons attracted the attention of Mark Twain, who employed Kemble to illustrate Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 - April 21, 1910), known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was lauded as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced," and William Faulkner called him "the father of American literature". His novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), the latter often called "The Great American Novel". First Edition (Green Cover): The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The first American edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was published in 1885 by New York's Charles L. Webster and Company, Twain's own publishing house. The book was originally scheduled for release in December 1884, but problems with printing and illustrations delayed the U.S. release until 1885, which angered Twain as he hoped it would be available for the Christmas shopping season. This edition features 174 black and white illustrations from American illustrator E.W. Kemble, whom Twain personally commissioned for the project. Earliest printings of this edition feature a dark green cloth cover and binding with a cartoon-esque likeness of Finn standing in front of a picket fence. Whereas the green covered iteration is referred to as a first edition, first issue, the blue covered version is commonly known simply as a first edition. Charles L. Webster and Company, run by Twain's nephew, Charles Webster, published the first American edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1885. An estimated 20,000 copies were issued in cloth, most of them being green and about 1 in 20 issued in blue, if requested by the subscriber. Another 2500 were issued in sheepskin and 500 copies in three-quarter leather. There are three universally-agreed upon issue points that discern a cloth first edition copy of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from a later edition. The heading for Chapter VI (6) on the first contents page (p.9) reads "Huck Decided to Leave." In later editions, this was changed to "Huck Decides to Leave." On page 13, the Illustrations list, "Him and another Man" is incorrectly listed at page 88. On page 57, eleven lines from the bottom, it reads "with the was" which was changed in later editions to "with the saw." All three points are present in this copy. The copyright should state 1884, with the title page stating 1885. This is as it is with this copy.