ORIGINAL INK DRAWING

[TWAIN, MARK] [Clemens, S. L.] Kemble, E. W. ORIGINAL INK DRAWING. [ca. 1890] 6 x 7 1/2 inches. Finely drawn image of a middle-aged bearded man in coat, vest, cravat, and wide-brim slouch hat, holding his hands together with a top coat draped over his left arm. Signed "Kemble." The printer's marks caption the drawing "Mr. Shelburn" [sic] and "Page 11" together with a few other marks and numbers. Probably from a `Century Magazine' archive of Kemble drawings (we've had several before from `The Century' with identical markings). Kemble's career as a book illustrator began when he was called upon to illustrate the first edition of Twain's HUCKLEBERRY FINN in 1884 (whose first chapters first appeared in `The Century Magazine'). He went on to illustrate other works by Twain: LIBRARY OF HUMOR (1888), the 1899 uniform editions of HUCK FINN and PUDD'NHEAD WILSON, and `The Private History of a Campaign That Failed' (Century Mag., Dec., 1885). This drawing is not from any of Twain's works (those drawings fetch high four-figures), although the man and his hat do very closely resemble "Colonel Sherburn" at page 187 in HUCK FINN. Sherburn (note the different spelling) was the man who tired of listening to the bluster of Boggs, the town drunk, shot him dead in the street, and indignantly faced down the cowardly mob that gathered. Kemble also illustrated several of his own books (some of them "comic" racist garbage), as well as many popular authors, including George W. Cable, Joel Chandler Harris, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. A patient search through two decades of `The Century Magazine' would very likely identify the original use of this drawing.