MARK TWAIN

Literature

WONDERFUL ORIGINAL MARK TWAIN MANUSCRIPT PAGE FROM “THE GILDED AGE’

Super rare original manuscript page in the hand of Mark Twain for ‘THE GILDED AGE’, (8×4 7/8 in). [Hartford, 1893] approximately 98 words in Clemens’ hand, written in bold black ink with a few emendations and corrections, numbered at the top margin 1187 (originally numbered 5), hinged to a page of manuscript from Charles Dudley Warner’s portion of the novel (numbered 931), and accompanied by 3 other manuscript pages in the hand of Warner (724,1148 and unnumbered). Contained within a beautiful brown morocco folding case.

In this fragment of Chapter 51, Colonel Sellers attempts to convince Washington Hawkins that a small minority of honest men in Congress are capable of doing some good.

‘THE GILDED AGE, A TALE OF TODAY’ (Hartford, 1873) was a collaborative effort by Clemens and his friend, Charles Dudley Warner to write a contemporary novel satirizing American society and politics. “With their main plots staked out, Clemens and Warner began working like tunnel crews boring from opposite sides of the mountain…Clemens wrote the first 11 chapters at white heat …In general as he [Clemens} likes to say, he contributed the fact and Warner the fiction (Kaplan, Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain, pp. 160-161). The present manuscript is particularly important chapter in which Colonel Sellers (modeled after Clemens’ cousin) attempts to keep faith in even a small minority of Congress.

Provenance: Sotheby Copley Sale June 17, 2010.

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