I'm late to this discussion- so what else is new?- but I read one message containing a reference to the lag time between the publication of the first British edition (October, 1884, if memory serves) and the first American edition of AHF (February, 1885).  One reason for the delay was deliberate- an attempt to thwart the predilection of the British to publish pirate editions, for which Twain, of course, received no royalties.  Pirated/bootleg editions of Twain's earlier works were common in England and Canada, but, without an American edition to copy, initially, these readers would be forced to purchase the legit editions of AHF.  As always, however, in this response, you get what you pay for and there is the implicit boilerplate caveat of deferral to Kevin's observations regarding Twain's publication history.   Issues of both of his FIRSTS articles are invaluable assets for the collector as well as the scholar.
Martin Zehr
Kansas City




________________________________
 From: Arianne <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] 
Sent: Monday, July 22, 2013 12:32 AM
Subject: Re: Illustration problem: true?
 

Thanks for your details.  I wasn't able to find your article on either of
the links you gave.  Not qualified to join one, and got to your listing in
the Bookseller one, but couldn't figure out how to get to your article.

Sigh.

Do you think illustration given in the article I sent was the original one
or just made up to make a point?

Arianne Laidlaw


On Sun, Jul 21, 2013 at 7:33 PM, Kevin Mac Donnell <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> The basic outline of the story is true, but that writer garbles his facts.
> Only the earliest prospectuses contained the ribald drawing, and sales
> agents were instructed to remove the page and mail it to the publisher or
> else their orders would not be honored. It was not an act of revenge by
> Kemble for rejected drawings. No copies of the published book have the
> ribald state of the drawing and there is no evidence that any ever did.
> Copies were corrected before some sheets were collated and sewn (by
> replacing the entire gathering in which the illustration appeared), and
> others were corrected after some sets of sheets had been collated and sewn
> (by use of a cancel) but before any sheets were cased into bindings. Some
> sets of sheets that were set aside very early for leather bindings before
> the illustration plate was altered by somebody in the print shop using an
> awl actually have the first state of the plate before the alteration was
> made. All copies in the blue and green cloth bindings have the corrected
> state of the illustration. No copies of the book have the ribald state.
>
> It's a bit of an overstatement to claim it nearly derailed the book. It
> generated some publicity and gave the publisher a chance to wax
> sanctimonious about correcting the problem.
>
> It's not a new discovery either. Twain's bibliographer Merle Johnson wrote
> about it in 1910, 1935, and 1939, and so did others, and it's recorded in
> the Bibliography of American Literature, volume II (1957).
>
> I wrote about it at length, correcting errors of fact and speculative
> nonsense, in a 1998 article in Firsts Magazine whose text you can access at
> abaa.org or through my articles at academia.edu.
>
> Kevin
> @
> Mac Donnell Rare Books
> 9307 Glenlake Drive
> Austin TX 78730
> 512-345-4139
> Member: ABAA, ILAB
> *************************
> You may browse our books at
> www.macdonnellrarebooks.com
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Arianne" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Sunday, July 21, 2013 6:54 PM
> Subject: Illustration problem: true?
>
>
> >I hadn't heard this before, so don't know if it is true or not.
> >
> >
> http://mentalfloss.com/article/31107/crudely-drawn-penis-almost-derailed-huckleberry-finn
> >
> > --
> > Arianne Laidlaw
> >
> >
> >
> > -----
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> >
>
>
>
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-- 
Arianne Laidlaw A '58