Mark Twain Essay Compilation

I have a book that contains a number of different essays from Twain, also some other material from other authors. Much of it is from The American Review.
There is no publisher or date listed in the the front pages and the yellowing of the pages is not consistent throughout as well as the page numbers.
I’m wondering if this was bound up for educational purposes, at home by someone for personal consumption or something else?

Any info would be greatly appreciated, Thank You!

 

Sounds sort of like Readers Digest Condensed Books, work that originally appeared in a periodical collected together & bound as a hard cover book, in this case essays from various publications, so you, if you enjoyed this sort of thing, you didn't have to have a stack of magazines around if you wanted to keep them. Can't see why this wouldn't have been produced inexpensively for general readers.

 

I agree.
I would expect to see some sort of title page and/or some advertising or correspondence information with something like your describing. Possibly, as usual I may be wrong.

 

Wonder if contents were used without permission.

 

I dont think that something was used without permission, I think a Reader or a library had subscriptions to the magazines and the split them up and bound them according to the author

 

This may be the case. So it doesn't have a title page of any kind? I can try looking into this. I have a special fondness for the North American Review (NAR). It has a special history. It began publication in 1815, and is currently still being published. It was not published between the early 1940s and the mid 1960s. The current version published for the last 40 years at the University of Northern Iowa is a literary magazine/journal focusing mostly on fiction and poetry. So it is different from the older version.

They are actually having a conference this weekend to celebrate 50 years of publication at UNI. A few years ago they had a conference to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the first publication of the periodical in Boston. Anyway, I used to work in the library at UNI and have some knowledge of NAR history. And one of the editors has as well. I could look into this if you'd like.

 

Yes, please!

 

How would you get the pages into signatures for binding? @Shwikman Are all pages the same type of paper?

 

The paper appears to be consistent in weight and size and not trimmed down from original size or anything, margins are intact although not all of the essays are clearly identified on the page as ‘North American Review.

 

Same typeface too?

 

What is the latest date you see on the essays? Are the typefaces consistent? How many essays are there? Would you give the titles?

Because of the upcoming conference I wouldn't be able to ask anybody about this until next week, as they will be too busy. But I can look into this myself, bibliographically. The boards (covers) appear to me to be from the 19th century, although I could be wrong.

 

To answer your initial question..There is no title page, only a few blank pages up front.
And yes....any info you might gather would be greatly appreciated. The book is in pretty sad shape, plus the fact that it seems to be recycled periodicals probably eliminates it from having any value but I’m still very curious about its origins.
Thank You!

 

I’ll gather up this info for you. Thank You!

 

what a literary giant....!
Just from reading those 3 pages..... I feel small , as if standing in the shadow of greatness.
( I'll get over it of course....)

 

I know. Don't you want to read the entire pieces?

 

No so much a question of want, it's more like a thirst that a small sip will not sate.

 

So here’s page one of each essay in order. There is only one essay by another author, it’s the 3rd one down. The other titles I found while casual flipping are what’s printed on the back of the first and last pages of the essays listed below as these were removed from other volumes/books presumably.(hopefully this makes sense).
The dates seem to be 1902-1905. I believe the copyrights/dates in the photos below are all of what’s in here. There is mention of other dates but they are written the text for chronological purposes.
I hope this helps! Thank You!!


The last page:

 

That is the note from the Rev. Dr. Judson Smith mentioned at the start of 'To My Missionary Critics', so not as much of a deviation as it might seem at first.

Don't know about anyone else, but I'm thoroughly confused by that.

 

So let’s say the last page of one of the Twain essays ends on a right hand page. The back side of that last page is the first page of the next essay in the original binding. If one of the Twain essays starts on a left hand page the backside of that page is the last page of whatever essay or article was preceded it in its original binding.

 

If these were pages taken from separate magazines, collected & bound into this one volume, they couldn't be like that. Page numbers also make no sense. For example, To the Person Sitting in Darkness ran from 161 - 176 when originally published.

http://dla.library.upenn.edu/dla/pa...rk, 1835-1910"&id=PACSCL_RBCat_RBCatAC85C5915

These are reprints made for this volume.