£1,000,000 Bank Note and Other New Stories
Author: Mark Twain (PSUED Samuel Langhorne Clemens) [1835-1910]
Year: 1880
Publisher: Chatto & Windus
Place: London
Description:
[2 Piccadilly ad]+[6]+311+[1 blank]+[32 ad] pages. Small octavo (7 1/" x 6") bound in original publisher's red cloth with gilt lettering to spine black pictorial bank-note to spine and cover with addition pictorial rendering to cover. 32 ad pages date March 1893. First edition.
The £1,000,000 Bank-Note charts the magical rags-to-riches ascent of a virtuous and resourceful mining broker's clerk from San Francisco who arrives in London with a single dollar in his pocket, and proceeds to ultimate and splendid financial success and fame in London society a paean to ingenuity and a celebration of its cunning confidence-man narrator. It is illustrated by Daniel Carter Beard.
The other pieces include "Mental Telegraphy," a serious essay reflecting Twain's continuing interest in the occult he and his wife would later try several seances, poignantly and unsuccessfully, to contact their daughter Suzy; "The German Chicago," contrasting Berlin of his era with the American city,
"About All Kinds of Ships," about steamboats old and new; plus a tongue-in-cheek
"Petition to the Queen of England" for relief from taxes. Also included are: "A Cure for the Blues," "The Enemy Conquered; or Love Triumphant," "Playing Courier," and "A Majestic Literary Fossil."
Condition:
Corners bumped, spine sunned, spine ends rubbed with a small split at the heal else about very good.
