Looks like abebooks has one copy priced reasonably if you really want it! http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=6435126200&searchurl=sts%3Dt%26tn%3Dmore%2Badventures%2Bof%2Bhuckleberry
Mine doesn't have the dust jacket- too bad! My Tom Sawyer Grows Up does.
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From: Sam Sackett <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Thursday, November 1, 2012 2:14 PM
Subject: Twain and Howe
Mark Twain and Edgar Watson Howe have three points of contact:
1. When Ed Howe self-published The Story of a Country Town (1883), he sent=
a copy of it to Mark Twain. Twain wrote Howe a letter of enthusiastic pra=
ise and gave permission to Howe to quote it. Lytle Biggs, one of the chara=
cters in the novel, speaks in satiric quips which foreshadow Twain's Pudd'n=
head Wilson (1894).
2. In 1885 the New York World jocularly proposed that Twain should run for=
president, with Howe as his vice-president.
3. In Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) Twain briefly describes a circ=
us performance in which a pretended drunken man performs amazing stunts whi=
le standing on the back of a trotting horse and is then revealed as a circu=
s performer. In Howe' autobiography, Plain People (1929) he describes havi=
ng seen just such a performance in the Miles Orton Circus, which played in =
Bethany, MO, in about 1863; Howe's short story "When the Circus Came to Tow=
n," which appeared in the American Magazine in 1911 and was reprinted as "D=
octor Gilkerson" in The Anthology of Another Town (1920), describes the sam=
e performance.
When I was assigned to write the Twayne United States Authors Series volume=
on E.W. Howe, there was no full-length biography of Howe in existence exce=
pt for his own autobiography, which I thought might not be sufficiently det=
ailed or reliable. Calder Pickett's biography had not been published. So =
I set to work accumulating the information to write a biography.
In 1965 I went to Bethany, where Howe grew up, and to nearby Fairview, wher=
e his father was preacher. I spent several days in Atchison, KS, interview=
ing people who had known Howe -- and discovering that most of them wouldn't=
talk to Pickett because he had offended them by an article on Howe he had =
written. I spent many hours in the office of the Atchison Globe reading th=
e files of the paper when Howe had edited it. I had an extensive correspon=
dence with Howe's son, the late Jim Howe; I spoke many times with Howe's ni=
ece, Adelaide Howe, who had been his housekeeper and was living then in the=
house Howe had lived in. I acquired photocopies of all of Howe's correspo=
ndence then available. I read everything Howe had published. I scoured al=
l available secondary sources.
And then I wrote the biography, about 200 pages long. But the TUSAS format=
limited me to 25 pages of biography, so I condensed what I had. Pickett's=
biography came out in 1968, and I was disappointed. He had not done more =
than half the research I had done, and he made the incorrect assumption tha=
t Howe had not changed his opinions in the 84 years of his life. His book =
was badly organized and poorly written. But since it existed, there was no=
t then any possibility that I could publish my full-length biography. My T=
USAS volume came out in 1972.
Recently I made an effort to find a publisher for my biography, since Picke=
tt's was out of print. Nobody was interested. Mine still needs more tidyi=
ng up, but there's no point in working further on it since I cannot publish=
it. So I have decided to make my draft available, free and uncopyrighted,=
to anyone who might want to read it. If you'd like to have a copy, e-mail=
me at [log in to unmask], and I'll send it to you as an e-mail attac=
hment.
You can download it and read it as an e-book, you can print it off and bind=
it, you can forward it to people you know who might be interested. If you=
are a library, you can catalog it as an e-book, or you can print it and pu=
t it on your shelves.
=20
Sam Sackett
http://samsackett.us
http://about.me/www.samsackett.com
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