The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Twain, Mark [Samuel L. Clemens] - 1876

London: Chatto & Windus, 1876. First edition. Fine. First edition, preceding the American edition by six months. A Fine copy in a Cosway-style binding (by Bayntun-Riviere) with a miniature painted by Stanley Hardy. All edges gilt, silk-moire end-papers, original cloth covers and spine bound into the rear. Minor wear to three of the bands now expertly and invisibly repaired. Otherwise without fault. Housed in a cloth slipcase.One of the classic American novels, Twain's bildungsroman follows the adventures of Tom Sawyer - and his friend Huck Finn -- in St. Petersburg, Missouri told with Twain's characteristic and unmatchable wit and humor. It would become his best-selling book and its sequel, "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," is arguably the greatest American novel of all time. "Mr. Samuel Clemens has taken the boy of the Southwest for the hero of his new book… and has presented him with a fidelity to circumstance which loses no charm by being realistic in the highest degree, and which gives incomparably the best picture of life in that region as yet known to fiction." (Contemporary Atlantic Monthly Review). Fine.