"Encounter with an Interviewer." In: LOTOS LEAVES.
Original Stories, Essays, and Poems... Edited by John Brougham and John Elderkin. Illustrated. Boston: William F. Gill and Company, 1875. Original brown cloth elaborately decorated in black and gilt, beveled edges, all page edges gilt.
First Edition, first printing (with the proper issue points on both sides of the title leaf) -- of this oversize compendium of "stories, essays, and poems," published (actually in November 1874) to benefit the American Dramatic Fund, via the Lotos Club in New York City (a literary society founded in 1870, still active today). This is the first appearance of Twain's humorous parody, primarily in dialogue; it would later (1878) be collected in his PUNCH, BROTHERS, PUNCH! (in one edition of which, Twain would add this post script: "I thought I could make this interview as unreliable and incoherent as the average newspaper interview. But that was another of my mistakes”).
Other contributors include Wilkie Collins ("A Fatal Fortune" -- which appeared as "A Mad Marriage" in All The Year Round the month before, and was later collected in the 1875 edition of MISS OR MRS?) -- and the dedicatee of this volume, Alfred Tennyson ("The Lotos-Eaters").
This is a hefty (4-pound, 410-page) book, in very good-plus condition (quite minor edge-wear) -- which is remarkable, given its size. Blanck 3363. Item #15729
Price: $575.00