"A True Story, Repeated Word for Word as I Heard It."
In: THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY. Boston: H.O. Houghton and Company, November 1874. Original buff printed wrappers.
First Appearance of this well-known story -- and Twain's first of many appearances in THE ATLANTIC. During the 1870s Twain and his family spent extended summers at Quarry Farm in Elmira NY -- the home of his wife Livy's sister and her husband, Susan and Theodore Crane. It was there that Twain heard this story -- told by the Cranes' cook, once-enslaved "Auntie [Mary Ann] Cord" -- about a mother and son being separated and finally reunited. "Repeated word for word as I heard it" means in her black dialect. In 1875 this tale would be collected in Twain's SKETCHES NEW AND OLD, and in 1877 it was published as a separate book in Osgood's "Vest-Pocket Series." The list of contributors in this issue reads like a Who's Who of Literary New England -- Henry James Jr., Kate Osgood, Charles Warren Stoddard, John G. Whittier, W.D. Howells, Celia Thaxter, and Oliver Wendell Holmes among others.
Condition is near-fine (top 3/4-inch of spine chipped away, a couple of short closed tears). See Blanck 3364 and 3373. Item #15843
Price: $375.00