Estimated Price:

   $   

Realized Price:

   $   

What is this symbol? This symbol indicates that this auction hose has verified this price result.

Log in or subscribe to view price data

N/A Personal Memoirs. New York: Charles L. Webster, 1885?1886 2 volumes, in 8s (9Á x 5€ in.; 230 x 146 mm). Engraved frontispiece portraits, numerous engravings, etchings, maps, and holograph facsimiles; light foxing to frontispiece in vol. 2, short marginal tear to facsimile inserted between pages 496 and 497 in vol. 2, a few corners lightly creased. Publisher's half green morocco over plum cloth-covered boards, gilt medallions stamped on covers, spine gilt, uniformly marbled endpapers and edges; boards and extremities rubbed, minor losses to turn-ins of both volumes, hinges a trifle weak. First edition, a signed presentation copy from the publisher, Samuel L. Clemens, of one of the greatest modern classics of military history, inscribed on the flyleaves of both volumes: "To Miss Fanny C. Hesse | with kindest regards of | S. L. Clemens | Christmas 1887." Presentation copies of the work are scarce, the only other copies to have appeared at auction in the past twenty-five years were the Victor Jacobs and Marshall B. Coyne copies, which sold in our rooms, 29 October 1996 (lot 239) and 5 June 2001 (lot 102), respectively. Little is known of the recipient, except that she was the sister-in-law of Clemens's friend and neighbor, the journalist Charles Warner, and was a regular visitor to the Nook Farm literary circle. Publication of the Memoirs through his own firm was one of Clemens's most important enterprises, which he claimed having discussed with Grant as early as 1881. Impoverished and beset by early signs of throat cancer in 1884, Grant finally agreed to write his memoirs, accepting Clemens's generous offer of seventy-five percent of the profits from the book. Grant died 23 July 1885, just four days after making his final revisions. Clemens marketed the book by subscription, employing a virtual army of sixteen general agents and ten thousand canvassers across America. Sales eventually reached three hundred and fifty thousand copies. Grant's "last-ditch efforts to support his wife eventually provided her with more than $420,000" (Craig E. Miller, "Give the Book to Clemens," American History, April 1999, pp. 41?44; 58?59); it represented one of the largest royalty payments in American publishing up to that time. Clemens characterized his efforts to acquit Grant from financial distress in his typical tongue-and-cheek fashion: during the Civil War, he ended his brief military career as a Confederate irregular when word reached him that Grant's regiment was fast approaching the Missouri Camp where he was quartered. Grant's initial victory caused Clemens to retreat westward into the safety of a literary career. As Grant's friend and publisher later in life, Clemens ironically became "the savior of his early conqueror" (LeMaster & Wilson, Mark Twain Encyclopedia, p. 338). Reference: Lilly/Karanovich 11