St. Twel'mo; or, The Cuneiform Cyclopedist of Chattanooga (Vincent Starrett's copy, SIGNED by him and with his bookplate tipped in)

C. H. Webb, New York, 1867 An excellent, very good plus copy of the first edition. Vincent Starrett's copy, signed by him on a front free endpaper, and with his bookplate tipped onto the front pastedown. (Vincent Starrett, bibliophile, author, newspaperman and Sherlock Holmes afficionado, had several different bookplates. This one was designed by the illustrator Gordon Browne, son of H.K. "Phiz" Browne, English artist and illustrator.) Light red cloth-covered boards with beveled edges, gilt front board lettering/decoration (bright), 6 7/8 x 5 inches, 59 pp. + one page of ads in rear, b/w illustrations (drawings) by Sol Eytinge, Jr. (American illustrator of newspapers, journals and books by authors that included Charles Dickens and Alfred, Lord Tennyson). Very good plus (sunning of spine; slight edgewear; mild patchy superficial erosion of sizing of cloth; pages clean and binding tight and square). C. H. Webb was the first publisher of Mark Twain, and in fact, Twain's first book, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, was published the same year as this book written and published by Webb). The page of ads in the rear lists Twain's book: "The Jumping Frog, and Other Sketches; by Mark Twain; 12mo, English cloth, beveled edges, $1,50; This is the first published book of this celebrated and rising humorist. Abounding with the quaintest and rarest wit, which never degenerates into coarseness, it can not fail to have an extensive sale." As noted, Webb was both the author and publisher of St. Twel'mo, and the dedication page states, tongue in cheek, "To my best friend and nearest relative, the publisher, I dedicate this little book. The author." "Charles Henry Webb (January 24, 1834 May 24, 1905) was an American poet, author and journalist. He was particularly known for his parodies and humorous writings. Webb worked as both a whaler and a war correspondent. He spent three years at sea, and was then taken on by The New York Times where he covered the front lines of the Civil War. When his friend Mark Twain had difficulty finding a publisher for his first collection of sketches, Webb offered to take on the project himself. Webb served as both editor and publisher for The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches. When it was released under the American News Company imprint in 1867, Twain reported to a newspaper, '[Webb] has gotten it up in excellent style, and has done everything to suit his own taste, which is excellent. I have made no suggestions. In 1867, Webb wrote St. Twel'mo, or the Cuneiform Cyclopedist of Chattanooga, a parody of the novel St. Elmo by Augusta Evans Wilson which had sold over a million copies within four months of its publication the year before." "Augusta Jane Evans (Wilson) wrote nine novels about southern women that were among the most popular fiction in nineteenth-century America. Her most successful novel, St. Elmo (1866), sold a million copies within four months of its appearance and remained in print well into the twentieth century. The sexual tensions between the book's cynical Byronic hero, St. Elmo, and its beautiful Christian heroine, self-made writer Edna Earl, inspired the christening of villages, plantations, steamboats, railway carriages, male infants, a punch, a cigar, and one infamous parody, St. Twel'mo, or the Cuneiform Cyclopedist of Chattanooga (1867). Edna Earl also later became the namesake of Eudora Welty's heroine Edna Earle Ponder in The Ponder Heart (1954)." (K082). Signed by Author(s). 1st Edition. Hardcover. Very Good/No Jacket.