The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Twain, Mark [PSUED Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835-1910) - 1876

[i-ix]+17-[275 (verso blank)]; 4 pages published advertisements; 2 separate blanks. Octavo (8 3/4" x 7"). bound in original publisher's blue cloth with gilt verso lettering on spine with black decoration on spine and cover with gilt lettering and decoration to cover. Following issue points half title with frontispiece on verso; "1876" on title with "1875" on verso; second page of Contents paginated "xii," third page "xiii;" second page of Illustrations correctly paginated "xvi;" publishers ads "Revised December 1st, 1876" followed by blank and end paper. Second state of the first American edition.
Not counting The Gilded Age, which was co-authored with Charles Dudley Warner, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was Mark Twain's first novel. By the time he died, it had become an American classic, and it remains perhaps the best-loved of all his books among general readers. When it first came out in 1876, however, it was comparatively a failure. Despite Twain's determination "that Tom shall outsell any previous book of mine," the American Publishing Co. sold less than 24,000 copies in the book's first year (compared, for example, to 70,000 for Innocents Abroad in a comparable period). As an imaginative act, Tom Sawyer led directly on to the greatness of Huckleberry Finn and Twain's other fictions of childhood or the Mississippi valley. As a commercial disaster, it pushed Twain in the direction that would lead him to create his own publishing company.
Condition:
Spine rebacked, lightly soiled with some internal fingering, first few pages including title stained. A good to very good copy of a scare item.