Book of the Week — Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant

20 Monday Feb 2017

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American Civil War, bankruptcy, cancer, Catholic, editor, Gertrude Stein, Jew, Julius Caesar, Mark Twain, memoirs, military, New York, peace, politics, President, Protestant, Samuel Clemens, stenographer, Ulysses S. Grant, Union, veterans, war, Webster

“‘Let us have peace.’ The expressions of these kindly feelings were not restricted to a section of the country, nor to a division of the people. They came from individual citizens of all nationalieties; from all denominations — the Protestant, the Catholic, and the Jew; and from the various societies of the land — scientific, educational, religious, or otherwise. Politics did not enter into the matter at all.”

PERSONAL MEMOIRS OF U. S. GRANT
Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885)
New York: C. L. Webster & Co., 1885-86
First edition
E672 G76 1885

An ineffectual, if not disastrous, president, ruined by bankruptcy after being defrauded of his estate, and dying of throat cancer, Ulysses S. Grant, Union hero of the American Civil War, agreed to publish his memoirs. He needed the money to try to secure an economically stable future for his family.

Samuel Clemens, whose pen name was Mark Twain, served as his editor. In the last month of his life, Grant struggled to dictate his notes to a stenographer and managed to finish his memoirs shortly before his death. For Clemens, witnessing the tenacity of the dying man, Grant became, once more, a heroic figure.

The memoirs focused almost entirely on the old general’s actions during the war. Still considered among the greatest of military memoirs, the two volume set became an immediate bestseller, praised for its high literary qualities. Grant’s style was straightforward and compelling. Clemens compared the book to Julius Caesar’s Commentaries. Gertrude Stein admired the book and said that she could not think of Grant without weeping.

His Memoirs were a financial and critical success. Thousands of war veterans and their families made a ready market for the book. Grant’s family, who received seventy-five percent of the royalties, quickly re-established their fortune, receiving nearly a half million dollars from the book.

Book of the Week — Life on the Mississippi

21 Monday Nov 2016

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American, American Civil War, booksellers dummy, Boston, childhood, England, greed, gullibility, James R Osgood, life, Mark Twain, Mississippi River, New Orleans, Ohio River, railroads, rare books, Samuel Clemens, St. Louis, steamboat, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, typewriter, United States

“Look at me! I’m the man they call Sudden Death and General Desolation! Sired by a hurricane, dam’d by an earthquake, half-brother to the cholera, nearly related to the small-pox on the mother’s side! Look at me! I take nineteen alligators and a bar’l of whiskey for breakfast when I’m in robust health, and a bushel of rattlesnakes and a dead body when I’m ailing! I split the everlasting rocks with my glance, and I squench the thunder when I speak! Whoo-oop! Stand back and give me room according to my strength! Blood’s my natural drink, and the wails of the dying is music to my ear! Cast your eye on me, gentlemen!—and lay low and hold your breath, for I’m bout to turn myself loose!”

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“I became a new being, and the subject of my own admiration. I was a traveler! A word never had tasted so good in my mouth before. I had an exultant sense of being bound for mysterious lands and distant climes which I never have felt in so uplifting a degree since. I was in such a glorified condition that all ignoble feelings departed out of me, and I was able to look down and pity the untraveled with a compassion that had hardly a trace of contempt in it.”

Life on the Mississippi
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Boston: James R. Osgood and Co., 1883
First American edition, first state
F353 C6458 1883b

During an 1872 visit to the American Midwest, Samuel Clemens was “struck by the great diminution of steamboat traffic on the Ohio River and became anxious to document the steamboat era before it vanished altogether….” Life is his memoir of his youthful years as a “cub” pilot on a steamboat paddling up and down the Mississippi River. He used his childhood experiences growing up along the Mississippi in a number of works, including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but in Life, thoroughly described the river and the pilot’s life prior to the American Civil War.

Clemens wrote of his return to the river, traveling on a steamboat from St. Louis to New Orleans. He described the competition from the railroads; the new cities; and a world of greed, gullibility, and bad architecture. Clemens considered Life his greatest work, in spite of the fact that he attempted to rewrite it immediately after publication.

This is believed to be the first literary work composed on a typewriter. It was published simultaneously in the United States and England. Illustration on page 441, showing Mark Twain in flames, which was omitted at the request of Mrs. Clemens in further printings of the same date.

Sold by subscription only, Rare Books has a booksellers dummy for this subscription. University of Utah copy in library binding.

Book of the Week – The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

08 Monday Sep 2014

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advertisements, American, bookstores, British, California, Canada, copyright, England, frontispiece, Hartford, London, manuscript, Mark Twain, piracy, prospectus, royalties, Samuel Clemens, San Francisco, subscription, Tom Sawyer, typewritten, United States, unpublished

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Hartford, CT: American Pub. Co.; San Francisco, CA: A. Roman, 1876
First American edition, first printing
PS1306-A1-1876

Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) wrote three different versions of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer between 1872 and 1875 before it was first published in London in June, 1876.

Many American authors preferred to have their books published first in England, since that was the only way to secure British copyright. First printings in England, and then the United States, usually occurred only a couple of months apart. In the case of Tom Sawyer, the delay was longer, frustrating Twain. Too much of a delay often resulted in piracy, which is exactly what happened in the case of this work. At least one pirated edition surfaced in July in Canada.

Twain believed that the delay and the piracy caused him loss in royalties. Tom Sawyer was reviewed unfavorably in the London Examiner, the day it came out. A July review in the literary magazine, The Atheneaum, was more kindly.

In December 1876, Tom Sawyer was printed in the United States and sold by subscription only. This was a common method of book distribution in the United States during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Book agents would cross the country with a publisher’s prospectus, selling and placing orders for as yet unpublished titles. Once the title was released the books would be delivered directly to subscriber’s homes. Only later editions were available in bookstores.

Tom Sawyer was not an immediate success. The American publisher sold only 24,000 copies in its first year. The pirated edition was not the only reason for poor sales. One book agent in California complained that the story, at only 274 pages, was not long enough. Potential subscribers apparently felt the same way.

Twain typed the manuscript for Tom, and later claimed that it was the first typewritten manuscript. Historians, however, believe that this distinction goes to Twain’s Life on the Mississippi. The frontispiece of the first American edition was drawn by Twain. Publisher’s advertisements, dated Dec. 1, 1876 on two leaves in back.

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~ News from the Rare Books Department of Special Collections at the J. Willard Marriott Library, The University of Utah

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