Dear Forum Members,
My friend Kevin MacDonnell always has so much to add.
Let's talk Huckleberry Finn. We all know the story, we all know the impact
that it had on America when it first appeared, we all see the reverberations
of it down through time, and we all go nuts when one of our own publishes a
sanitized version of the text even today. But it is the BOOK of which I
speak now.
Kevin MacDonnell's history of the printing of the first edition is
mind-numbingly complete. It can be found in Huck Finn Among the
Issue-Mongers, Firsts Magazine, September, 1998 Volume 8 Number 9. If you
don't care about the book itself and its construction, it's fine to stop
reading the rest of this Forum entry.
Members such as Martin Zehr and myself find the history of the text and its
compilation, and construction as well, to be fascinating, and this history
can be found in no other place than MacDonnell's article.
To hold an 1885 copy of the first edition in your hands, to feel the
glassy-smooth touch of the pages beneath your fingers, to have the aroma of
its musty binding rise up and greet your nostrils, to see the dots of ink
before you transformed into letters, words, phrases, ideas, and then to hear
this spellbinding story told again is to hold your own heart in your throat
as you travel along with Huck. You sit in that canoe with him and hear the
slave hunters question Huck who has paddled away to turn Jim in.
"What's that yonder?"
"A piece of a raft," I says.
"Do you belong on it?"
"Yes, sir."
"Any men on it?"
"Only one, sir."
"Well, there's five niggers run off to-night up yonder, above the head of
the bend. Is your man white or black?"
I didn't answer up prompt. I tried to, but the words wouldn't come. I tried
for a second or two to brace up and out with it, but I warn't man
enough—hadn't the spunk of a rabbit. I see I was weakening; so I just give
up trying, and up and says:
"He's white."
And on that lie, for us, the world changed. Forever. Only Twain could tell
the story of a naďve young boy who made us think differently about the
American black experience.
You've read the book and know all that it portends. And you're a nerd, so go
ahead and read MacDonnell's article again. You can back order it by going to
http://www.abebooks.com/Firsts-Book-Collectors-Magazine-Vol/5076212347/bd
So you like Huckleberry Finn?
Richard Talbot
1531 West Idaho Avenue
Falcon Heights, MN 55108-2118
(651) 646-6624
(651) 280 8734
[log in to unmask]
-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Twain Forum [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Kevin Mac
Donnell
Sent: Monday, July 22, 2013 8:01 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Illustration problem: true?
Sorry about that Arianne--
Both websites are badly designed, clearly the result of nerdy tech types
being allowed to organize the design without input from actual people who
would be using the sites. The ABAA website is currently being redesigned.
The academia website is hopelessly clumsy, the sort of thing you'd expect if
alien life-forms from another planet tried to imitate Facebook. The concepts
of targeting audiences, market-testing, and user friendliness were ignored.
Here are the links:
http://hq.abaa.org/pubs/twain4.html
This is the portion of my article about Huck Finn.
http://independent.academia.edu/KevinMacDonnell
As you scroll down the list of books, articles, and talks at academia the
entire 1998 article is titled "Collecting Mark Twain" and you can then
scroll through it to the section on Huck Finn. There is also a 2008 update
that has "Update" somewhere in the title.
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: 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-huc
kleberry-finn
>> >
>> > --
>> > Arianne Laidlaw
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > -----
>> > No virus found in this message.
>> > Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
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>> > 07/21/13
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>> -----
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>> Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
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>
>
>
> --
> Arianne Laidlaw A '58
>
>
>
> -----
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> Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
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Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
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