Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Price: US$390.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: An excellent, very good plus copy of the first edition. Vincent Starrett's copy, signed by him on a front free endpaper, and with his bookplate tipped onto the front pastedown. (Vincent Starrett, bibliophile, author, newspaperman and Sherlock Holmes afficionado, had several different bookplates. This one was designed by the illustrator Gordon Browne, son of H.K. "Phiz" Browne, English artist and illustrator.) Light red cloth-covered boards with beveled edges, gilt front board lettering/decoration (bright), 6 7/8 x 5 inches, 59 pp. + one page of ads in rear, b/w illustrations (drawings) by Sol Eytinge, Jr. (American illustrator of newspapers, journals and books by authors that included Charles Dickens and Alfred, Lord Tennyson). Very good plus (sunning of spine; slight edgewear; mild patchy superficial erosion of sizing of cloth; pages clean and binding tight and square). C. H. Webb was the first publisher of Mark Twain, and in fact, Twain's first book, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, was published the same year as this book written and published by Webb). The page of ads in the rear lists Twain's book: "The Jumping Frog, and Other Sketches; by Mark Twain; 12mo, English cloth, beveled edges, $1,50; This is the first published book of this celebrated and rising humorist. Abounding with the quaintest and rarest wit, which never degenerates into coarseness, it can not fail to have an extensive sale." As noted, Webb was both the author and publisher of St. Twel'mo, and the dedication page states, tongue in cheek, "To my best friend and nearest relative, the publisher, I dedicate this little book. The author." "Charles Henry Webb (January 24, 1834 May 24, 1905) was an American poet, author and journalist. He was particularly known for his parodies and humorous writings. Webb worked as both a whaler and a war correspondent. He spent three years at sea, and was then taken on by The New York Times where he covered the front lines of the Civil War. When his friend Mark Twain had difficulty finding a publisher for his first collection of sketches, Webb offered to take on the project himself. Webb served as both editor and publisher for The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches. When it was released under the American News Company imprint in 1867, Twain reported to a newspaper, '[Webb] has gotten it up in excellent style, and has done everything to suit his own taste, which is excellent. I have made no suggestions. In 1867, Webb wrote St. Twel'mo, or the Cuneiform Cyclopedist of Chattanooga, a parody of the novel St. Elmo by Augusta Evans Wilson which had sold over a million copies within four months of its publication the year before." "Augusta Jane Evans (Wilson) wrote nine novels about southern women that were among the most popular fiction in nineteenth-century America. Her most successful novel, St. Elmo (1866), sold a million copies within four months of its appearance and remained in print well into the twentieth century. The sexual tensions between the book's cynical Byronic hero, St. Elmo, and its beautiful Christian heroine, self-made writer Edna Earl, inspired the christening of villages, plantations, steamboats, railway carriages, male infants, a punch, a cigar, and one infamous parody, St. Twel'mo, or the Cuneiform Cyclopedist of Chattanooga (1867). Edna Earl also later became the namesake of Eudora Welty's heroine Edna Earle Ponder in The Ponder Heart (1954)." (K082)
Seller: Boojum and Snark Books, Kanab, UT, U.S.A.
Price: US$5000.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: 12mo, 198pp. A very good copy, rebound in blue cloth over sturdy boards, with new endpapers, and original front and rear board cloth laid down, mercifully retaining the gilt-stamped image of a frog at the bottom left of the front board. Though lacking the advertising leaf, the type is unbroken on pp. 66 and 198, indicating that this is one of the ~1000 copies from the very first print run of Mark Twain's very first book. Very mild foxing and a few marginal stains, but the contents are mostly clean. Not perfect, but a rather handsome copy of an essential Twain rarity; harder to obtain than any of his more popular books. BAL 3310. Zamorano 80 (#17).
Seller: Cleveland Book Company, ABAA, Rocky River, OH, U.S.A.
Twain, Mark. The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. C. H. Webb, New York, 1867.
Price: US$6000.00 + shipping
Condition: Good
Description: First edition, first printing of Mark Twain's first book, in the original binding. Gilt stamped green front cover, blind stamp back cover. Unbroken 'this' on final page, unbroken 'life' on page 66, unbroken '21' on page 21. Wear to corners, edges of spine fraying (see photos). Binding is sound. Text leans. Lacking the advertising page facing the title page. Previous owner's inscription on the dedication page. Significant foxing throughout (photos of the title page and copyright page are representative of the whole).
Seller: B Street Books, ABAA and ILAB, San Mateo, CA, U.S.A.
Mark Twain. The Celebrated Jumping Frog. C.H. Webb, 1867.
Price: US$6999.00 + shipping
Condition: Good
Description: First edition Mark Twain, The Celebrated Jumping Frog. His first ever published stories.
Seller: RJC_Firstedition, Mountain Home, ID, U.S.A.
Price: US$8000.00 + shipping
Description: 198pp. Duodecimo [17.5] Beveled brown boards with the title gilt stamped on the front board and backstrip. A jumping frog is gilt stamped on the front board and blind stamped on the rear board. Contemporary inscription on the tipped in front free endsheet with advertisement on the verso. Discreetly rebacked with the original backstrip laid over. First edition with unbroken type on pages 21, 61 and 198 and the inserted advertisement at the front. Perhaps no short sketch of Twain's so quickly won wide popularity as did 'The Jumping Frog.' Calaveras County, California, is known to thousands who have never seen the Golden State simply because of this gem of humor. This little volume, the author's first published book, came into being under the sponsorship of Charles Henry Webb - who also edited it under his pseudonym of 'John Paul.' To accompany 'The Jumping Frog' he chose twenty-six other sketches. Zamorano Eighty: 17. Wheat Books 43. Cowan p.49. BAL 3310.
Seller: Tschanz Rare Books, Salt Lake City, UT, U.S.A.
Price: US$8000.00 + shipping
Description: CONDITION: Good, re-backed with original spine laid down, loss to head and foot of original spine, 1960s gift inscription in ink on preliminary leaf. First edition, first printing. With the uncommon placement of the gilt frog in the center of the front cover, not the lower left corner. BAL 3310.
Seller: James Arsenault & Company, ABAA, Arrowsic, ME, U.S.A.
Price: US$10925.00 + shipping
Description: 6.75 x 4.5, 198 pp, vg, pencil notes on back of adv page else FINELY BOUND BY BAYNTUN-RIVIERE IN FULL CRUSHED BROWN MOROCCO, GILT STAMPED SPINE, ALL EDGES GILT, MARBLED END PAPERS. FIRST EDITION, FIRST STATE OF AUTHOR'S FIRST BOOK. A beautiful copy.
Seller: John K King Used & Rare Books, Detroit, MI, U.S.A.
Price: US$12500.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: Original green cloth with gilt-stamped spine and front cover. Bevelled edges. With gilt-stamped frog in the lower left corner of the front board, and the same image blindstamped on the rear board. FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING, with unbroken type on pages 21, 66, and 198. The preliminary ad has been excised, but the remaining stub is clearly a different buff color from the surrounding pages, which is known to characterize the leaf. One of 1000 copies of the first printing of Twain's first book. There are a few small rents to the cloth on the front board. The tips of the lower forecorners are worn through, and there is a short split to the surface cloth only at the foot of the front joint. Internally, there is a spot or two of foxing to the first couple of pages, and the front hinge is perhaps just a little tender. A bright, Very Good, and unrestored copy of a title that is usually found rebacked or recased. BAL 3310.
Seller: Clarel Rare Books, Los Angeles, CA, U.S.A.
Price: US$18500.00 + shipping
Description: First edition, first printing of the author's rare first book. Octavo, original cloth, first issue lacking the leaf of ads facing the title page but with unbroken type on pages 21, 66 and 198. In very good condition with light wear to the extremities. A sharp example. "Perhaps no short sketch of Twain's so quickly won wide popularity as did 'The Jumping Frog.' Calaveras County, California, is known to thousands who have never seen the Golden State simply because of this gem of humor. This little volume, the author's first published book, came into being under the sponsorship of Charles Henry Webb-who also edited it under his pseudonym of 'John Paul.' To accompany 'The Jumping Frog' he chose twenty-six other sketches, of which at least two, 'Curing a Cold' and 'The Story of the Bad Little Boy Who Didn't Come to Grief,' later attained the distinction of being incorporated into recitation books for the delectation of even wider audiences" Zamorano 80 #17. BAL 3310;
Seller: Raptis Rare Books, Palm Beach, FL, U.S.A.
Price: US$20000.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: First edition, first issue with one page of publisher's preliminary ad leaf facing the title page and unbroken type on pages 21, 66 and 198. Bound in publisher's original pebbled red cloth with beveled edges, titles in gilt on upper board and spine, with frog stamped in gilt on the lower left corner of the upper board and in blind on the lower board. Very Good or better with shallow chipping to spine ends, soiling to cloth. Superficial crack with a possible glue repair to front inner hinge, bookseller tickets to front and rear endsheets, and small stains to rear free endpaper. The author's first published book.
Seller: Burnside Rare Books, ABAA, Portland, OR, U.S.A.
Price: US$22415.12 + shipping
Description: First edition, first issue, of Mark Twain's first book. "Copies were bound simultaneously in green, terra cotta, dark brown, lavender, blue deep purple, maroon and red cloth" (MacDonnell, "The Primary First Editions of Mark Twain", Firsts, Vol. 8, no. 7/8). This copy features the gilt stamp of the leaping frog positioned to the lower left of the front cover as usual (some copies have the gilt stamp of the leaping frog in the centre of the front cover, though no priority has been established between the two); it has all of the points of a first issue as delineated by BAL. "Mark Twain wrote his story of the jumping frog. at the invitation of Artemus Ward (Charles Farrar Browne), his friend and the most popular American humorist of the day, to help fill out a volume of humorous sketches that Ward was editing. Fortuitously, and fortunately for Twain, the frog story arrived too late for inclusion in Ward's book; it was published instead as 'Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog' in the New York Saturday Press on 18 November 1865. It was soon reprinted in newspapers and comic periodicals throughout the nation, was pirated by Beadle's Dime Books, and was later collected with a new title in The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and other Sketches (1867). This humorous short story brought Twain his first popular acclaim and has proven to be his first literary masterpiece" (W. Craig Turner in The Mark Twain Encyclopaedia, 1993, pp. 133-5). BAL 3310. Small octavo. Original red cloth over bevelled boards, gilt lettered spine, front cover lettered in gilt with gilt stamp of jumping frog to lower left and blind to rear cover, brown coated endpapers. Housed in a custom black cloth slipcase. Single advert leaf on cream-yellow paper inserted between preliminary flyleaf and title. Bookseller's ticket to rear pastedown. Spine sometime cleaned, gilt retouched, a few marks to cloth, light wear to extremities, small superficial split to foot of front inner hinge, entirely sound, foxing to outer leaves, otherwise clean. A just about very good copy.
Seller: Peter Harrington. ABA/ ILAB., London, United Kingdom