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/