The American Claimant

[1]-[xvi]+17-277+[1]+[8 ads] pages with frontispiece, 23 black and white illustrations. Octavo (8 1/4" x 5 3/4) bound in original publisher's olive green cloth with gilt lettering and black pictorial to spine and cover. Illustrated by Dan Beard. (BAL 3434; McBride page 134) First American edition.

The Colonel Mulberry Sellers here re-introduced to the public is the same person who appeared as Eschol Sellers in the first edition of the tale entitled The Gilded Age, years ago, and as Beriah Sellers in the subsequent editions of the same book, and finally as Mulberry Sellers in the drama played afterward by John T. Raymond. The name was changed from Eschol to Beriah to accommodate an Eschol Sellers who rose up out of the vastly deeps of uncharted space and preferred his request--backed by threat of a libel suit--then went his way appeased, and came no more. In the play Beriah had to be dropped to satisfy another member of the race, and Mulberry was substituted in the hope that the objectors would be tired by that time and let it pass unchallenged. So far it has occupied the field in peace; therefore we chance it again, feeling reasonably safe, this time, under shelter of the statute of limitations. MARK TWAIN. Hartford, 1891.

Condition:

Spine ends and corners moderately rubbed, spine gilt dulled, spine faded, University of Chicago Library book plate to front paste down. Over all a very good copy.