I have had this set for only a couple of weeks and can't offer more
than a preview, either, but would like to second Kent's suggestion
that folks consider getting this set before the price goes up at the
end of the month.

I already had copies of many of the books in the set -- nearly a full
set, in fact, pieced together from individual titles from the Uniform
Edition I'd found at used book stores through the years.  With the
exception of the fine scholarly editions published by the Mark Twain
Project, those were the editions I had recently read.  It was a real
eye-opener to see the first editions reproduced in the Oxford Mark
Twain and to read familiar stories as they originally appeared, usually
in a heavily illustrated format.  In Beverly David and Ray
Sapirstein's essay on "Illustrators and Illustrations in Mark Twain's
First American Editions" that appears in all of the illustrated
volumes, there is a wonderful quote from George Ade about how Twain's
books were originally sold by subscription: "The publisher knew his
public, so he gave a pound of book for fifty cents, and crowded in plenty
of wood-cuts and stamped the outside with golden bouquets and put in
a steel engraving of the author..."  This set comes pretty close to
duplicating (or documenting) those editions, even including photos of the
original bindings.

Most reviews of the set that I've seen have highlighted the "big names"
lined up to write the introductions and afterwards.  See, for
example, "Introducing Introducers of Mark Twain" in the Fort Worth
Star-Telegram at

http://www.fwst.net/archives/12311996.arc/news/opinions/columntext/swindl2.htm

The introductions and afterwards are a bit uneven but mostly very
good, and some -- including Hal Holbrook's introduction to the
_Speeches_ -- are just fascinating and are important in their own
right.  I was most surprised by the essays by Beverly David and
Ray Sapirstein on "Reading the Illustrations in [volume name]" which
appear in each illustrated volume but which I had not seen mentioned
in the reviews.  I read these in sequence the night the set arrived and
found the development of Twain's views on illustrations and his
relationships with various illustrators quite interesting.

A couple of other surprises are also worth mentioning.  The edition of
_1601_ reproduced in the set is the original printing made by C. E.
S. Wood at West Point in 1882.  Robert Hirst's "A Note on the text"
(these also appear in each volume) notes that it was limited to 50
copies -- try finding that somewhere else!  Especially after reading Philip
Leon's recent book, _Mark Twain and West Point_, which discusses the
publication of this book and includes the related correspondence between
Twain and Wood (Wood mentioning how he played with the type
so it "pretended to the eye that it was contemporaneous with the
pretended 'conversation'"), it was a treat to see the full text in its
original form.  Unfortunately, the afterward for that volume must
have been written before Leon's book was published (also in 1996) and
would have benefited from it.

Another surprise was the inclusion of the Anti-Imperialist League of
New York's edition of _To the Person Sitting in Darkness_ in
_Following the Equator and Anti-Imperialist Essays_.  This pamphlet
reprinted part of Twain's essay from the February 1901 _North
American Review_.  Because Twain's comments in the essay about
American missionaries in China created a great deal of
controversy -- which didn't settle down until after his "To My
Missionary Critics" was published in April -- the League cut that
part from the essay before reprinting it in March.  As far as I
know, this is the first time that its pamphlet version has been
reprinted and it will now be much easier for people to compare
the editions.  The correspondence about this pamphlet among
the officers of the Anti-Imperialist League is discussed in an
article that will appear one of these days in the _Mark Twain
Journal_.  This volume also includes _King Leopold's Soliloquy_, an
essay that Harper & Brothers rejected and which was then published by
the American Congo Reform Association.  Although it was reprinted
in the 1960s by Seven Seas Books (Berlin) and International Publishers
(NY) with the original line drawings, this is probably the first time
the startling photographs included in the original pamphlet have been
reproduced.  Again, David and Sapirstein's essay on the illustrations
rightly emphasizes their importance to the political concerns of the
pamphlet.

I'm sure that every reader will find other surprises in this set, and
I'm sure I'll find more as I have more time to read through it.  I
highly recommend it.

Jim Zwick
[log in to unmask]
http://web.syr.edu/~fjzwick/