The Mississippi Pilot

A$400 · Offered by Douglas Stewart Fine Books

London : Ward, Lock, and Tyler, [1877]. bound with : Jinny by Bret Harte. London : George Routledge and Sons. Octavo, half roan over marbled boards (heavily rubbed), text block cracked, pp. [vi]; 142; (2 catalogue), 124; (4 catalogue), occasional light foxing, a good copy. First edition thus of The Mississippi Pilot by Mark Twain, being a reprint of Old Times on the Mississippi published in 1876, itself being a single volume edition of writing serialised in Atlantic Monthly Magazine in 1875. The writings would later be incorporated into Life on the Mississippi which is the non-fiction work of river life which Twain is best known for. The writer Samuel Langhorne Clemens was indeed a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River, he spent two years training on how to navigate it s challenging waterway, and his writings on the subject (under various titles) drew on his lived experiences. In fact, it was piloting that gave Twain his pen name Mark Twain , which the leadsman s cry for a measured river depth of two fathoms (12 feet), the minimum depth of water by which a steamboat can safely travel.

• Printing: later
• Binding: Hardcover

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