Beschreibung:

CLEMENS, Samuel Langhorne. Autograph manuscript of Chapter 30 of The Gilded Age . [Hartford, Conn., 1873]. 13 pages, 8vo, written in dark ink on rectos only of lined sheets (probably removed from a notebook), with extensive revisions by Twain (including very readable deletions and interlinear insertions with a thinner pen point), some crossed-through notes by him at top of first page (including "Meeting of a lot of Senatorial filth"), one of the pages formed by pasted-over sections, with the revised pagination of 693-705 and the new chapter number (revised twice) all supplied in purple ink (undoubtedly by Charles Dudley Warner); lacking p. 706 which would contain the final 54 words of printed text of the chapter, the first page of the manuscript with light stains, slight finger-soiling to some other pages, red morocco folding case . [ With :] Autograph manuscript page of notes by Clemens on his reading (apparently "Carlyle in Ireland"), dealing with the Devil and the nature of the universe (extraneous to this chapter), 1page, 8vo, in dark ink on plain paper, removed from a notebook with left edge a bit ragged . A CHAPTER FROM MARK TWAIN'S FIRST NOVEL The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (Hartford, 1873) was a collaborative attempt by Twain and Charles Dudley Warner to write a "contemporary" novel. It was the first novel that either author had attempted (it was also their only collaboration) and the work was completed in the record time of three months. "With their plots staked out, Clemens and Warner began working like tunnel crews boring from opposite sides of the mountain...In general, as he [Twain] liked to say, he contributed the fact and Warner the fiction" (Justin Kaplan, Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain , 1966, p. 160). As Marvin Felheim writes in his Introduction to The Gilded Age (New York: Meridian, 1994): "...the two writers produced a book whose powerful attack on the politics of post-Civil War America, combined with a subplot of sentimental romance, made it an immediate success...Subtitled 'A Tale of Today,' The Gilded Age is still an important document of its age as well as an impressive, if flawed, satirical novel. The main thrust of its criticism is directed against the greed and lust -- for land, for money, for power -- of an alliance of Western land speculators, Eastern capitalists, and corrupt officials who dominated the society and appreciably altered its character." In the above edition of The Gilded Age Chapter 30 occupies pages 215 to 217. In it the heroine Laura Hawkins goes to Washington as the guest of the corrupt Missouri Senator Abner Dilworthy, and her musings show Twain's deft ironic touch: "'He [the Senator] said I could be useful in the great cause of philanthropy, and help the blessed work of uplifting the poor and the ignorant, if he found it feasible to take hold of our Land. Well, that is neither here nor there; what I want is to go to Washington and find out what I am. I want money, too; and if one may judge by what she hears, there are chances there for a --.' For a fascinating woman, she was going to say, perhaps, but she did not." Once in Washington Laura becomes the Senator's lobbyist.