Books

Handsomely bound in the publisher's original terra cotta cloth brightly decorated with gilt and embossed floral designs on the front boards and on the spine. With very bright gilt and decorations on the spine with the merest touch of wear to the extremities. Very clean and tight throughout. This is the first issue with the title page clearly joined to the next leaf (conjugate); and the sheets bulk about 1". Mark Twain's satire humorously and pointedly lambastes everything from small-town politics and religious beliefs to slavery and racism. A desirable collector's copy of this mystery notable for its very early use of fingerprints to solve a crime. The first part of the novel seems to satirize racism in antebellum Missouri by exposing the fragility of the dividing line between white and black. The new Tom Driscoll is accepted by a family with high Virginian ancestry as its own, and he grows up to be corrupt, self-interested, and distasteful.[2] The reader does not know, at the end of the story, whether Tom's behavior results from nature or nurture. Naturalistic readings risk framing the story as a vindication of racism based on biological differences too subtle to be seen. (The essentialism is not reciprocal, however. Chambers adapts well to life as a slave and fails to successfully assume his proper place as a high-class white.)[3] The novel features the technological innovation of the use of fingerprints as forensic evidence. "The reader knows from the beginning who committed the murder, and the story foreshadows how the crime will be solved. The circumstances of the denouement, however, possessed in its time great novelty, for fingerprinting had not then come into official use in crime detection in the United States. Even a man who fooled around with it as a hobby was thought to be a simpleton, a pudd nhead . Wikipedia First Edition with matching dates of 1894 on the title and copyright pages.

"The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson" is a novel by Mark Twain set in the antebellum South. The story centers on two infants, one white and one black, switched at birth. Pudd'nhead Wilson, a keen but socially awkward lawyer, plays a key role in uncovering the switch. The novel explores themes of racial identity, slavery, and social injustice. Twain employs his trademark wit to satirize societal norms while delivering a poignant commentary on prejudice and the tragic consequences of mistaken identities.