Beschreibung:

CLEMENS, SAMUEL LANGHORNE. ("Mark Twain"). The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and other Sketches. By Mark Twain. New York: C.H. Webb, 1867. 12mo, original red cloth, the frog, in gilt, is in the lower left part of the front cover, bevelled edges, rebacked with nearly all of original spine laid down, skilfull repairs to fore-corners. FIRST EDITION, Second Printing (without the inserted advertisement leaf and with the broken type), PRESENTATION COPY TO HIS CLOSE FRIEND JAMES HENRY RILEY, inscribed by Clemens on front flyleaf: "To J.H. Riley With compts [compliments] of Mark Twain;" with a gift inscription by Riley in light pencil at the top of this flyleaf: "J.H.R. to E.H. [W.?] February 26th/68." "... James Henry Riley [was] Clemens's drinking and talking companion from newspaper days in San Francisco and Washington. Riley was a kind of flesh-and-blood Doppelgnger of the unregenerated Clemens, and their careers and personalities ran somewhat parallel... In Roughing It [1872] Clemens wrote about his first impressions of the seedy and forlorn Riley in San Francisco: 'He was full of hope, pluck, and philosophy; he was well read and a man of cultivated taste; he had a bright wit and was master of satire; his kindliness and his generous spirit made him royal in my eyes and changed his curbstone seat to a throne and his damaged hat to a crown'". (Justin Kaplan, Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain: a Biography , New York, 1966, p. 125). BAL 3310; Johnson Clemens , p. 3; Zamorano 80, no. 17. Copies of The Jumping Frog bearing contemporary and significant presentation inscriptions by Twain are extremly rare.