At 08:54 AM 11/9/2007, you wrote: Dear Robert: The confusion about the title actually comes from the first edition, in which the illustrator, Edward W. Kemble, used "The" in the opening illustration to chapter 1, and the publisher used it in the running heads. Here's the explanatory note from the 2003 Mark Twain Project edition (the note is hung on the chapter 1 illustration). Kemble's use of ``The'' in the title here is mistaken. The definite article was also mistakenly used in the running heads of the first edition, and in some of Webster and Company's advertisements for the book. It appeared throughout the English and Continental editions, as well as the third and fourth American editions, published in 1896 and 1899. Just after completing the book manuscript, Clemens himself quoted the title with the article in a letter to James R. Osgood, but without it in one to Andrew Chatto, both on 1 September 1883. And probably he, rather than the editor or typesetter, used it in the introductory note for the selections published in the Century Magazine (SLC 1884b). Still, there is little room for doubt that he intended the book title to omit the article. Kemble's design for the cover, which was among the first illustrations reviewed and approved by Webster and Clemens, omitted the article, as did Clemens's holograph title page from the summer of 1883. The printed title page of the first edition, as well as the printed half-title, the illustrated cover and the spine (and both front and back of the prospectus) all agree with the holograph title page in omitting the definite article (SLC to Osgood, 1 Sept 83, WEU; SLC to Chatto, 1 Sept 83, Uk, in Gates, 79; Webster to SLC, 5 May 84, CU-MARK; SLC to Webster, 7 May 84, NPV, in MTLP, 174; David and Sapirstein, 38). Vic Fischer