A follow-up to the "more than you ever wanted to know about the 1951 Twain
library sale"---

I reread the contemporary accounts I have of that sale-- LA Times article
the week before the sale, the notice in the auction records for that year
(ABPC), and two reports in AB Weekly by Jake Blanck (May 5 and 26, 1951).
None mention the presence of a sale label. I also examined about 100 books
from Twain's library that were sold at Butterfield's in 1997 (I dropped out
of the bidding at $180,000, but they ended up at MTM in Hartford, so I guess
I'm OK with that....) and these were books bought by a private individual,
both listed and unlisted books, and none had the label. I also emailed the
fellow who catalogued them for Butterfield and he confirmed there were no
labels. This all points to the label having been printed up for an LA dealer
after the sale. The dealers who attended the sale were Hunley, Zeitlin,
Dawson, Valentine, and perhaps one or two others. Hunley and Zeitlin were
the biggest buyers among the few dealers present. I've compared the label to
a similar small label being used by Hunley at that time and the typeface is
identical, but keep in mind that Hunley sold books from Twain's library (to
me, in the 1970s) that he acquired at that 1951 sale which did not have this
label, and that the LA booksellers were all fond of nice typography, so the
source of the little black and red 1951 sale label remains a mystery for
now. But books with that label should be viewed with caution, for the
reasons I previously outlined. I'll be interested to know if Alan Gribben,
in his new edition of MT's LIBRARY, will be able to trace the provenance of
any books with that label before the 1970s, perhaps to their source.They are
probably legitimate, but sorting out which ones have migrated to other books
could be difficult, if not impossible.

The former owner of "Twain's copy of THE HASHEESH EATER" confirms again
today that he can remember it having no markings whatsoever, and does not
know where it came from, but that it surfaced in the 1970s (that's the same
time when other books with this sale label and supposed furniture from the
1951 sale was surfacing in the hands of two questionable characters who knew
this former owner). All of this makes the probability of "Twain's Ludlow"
more doubtful than ever, as it sits in storage once again, and unavailable
for inspection, half way round the world.

Kevin Mac Donnell
Austin TX