(Clemens, Samuel Langhorne)

Ulysses S. Grant:  Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant. New York: Charles L. Webster & Company, 1885–1886

2 volumes, in 8s (9 x 5 3/4 in.; 229 x 146 mm). Engraved frontispiece portraits, etched plates, numerous maps in text, holograph facsimiles (including the notorious dedication leaf); margins of text lightly browned, facsimile of surrender terms offered by Grant detached and torn. Publisher's decorative green cloth, stamped in gilt and black, front covers gilt with facsimile of the congressional medal awarded to Grant in 1863, spines with vignette of four-star general's epaulet, floral-patterned endpapers, plain edges; a little darkened and rubbed, rear inner hinge of second volume cracking.

A. Reasoner, Morristown, New Jersey (inscription from Clemens, signatures on front pastedowns and head of first page of text) — Victor and Irene Murr Jacobs (sale, Sotheby’s New York, 29 October 1996, lot 239)

First edition; a publisher's presentation copy inscribed and signed by Samuel L. Clemens on the front fly-leaf; "To Mr. A. Reasoner with the kindest regards of S. L. Clemens, New York, Dec. 1. 1885." Because Grant's Memoirs were published posthumously, there are no author's presentation copies. And surprisingly, given Clemens's enormous pride in the great success of the book, publisher's presentation copies are very rare. Only two others can be traced in the auction records: the Nick Karanovich and Marshall B. Coyne copies, which were sold in our rooms 19 June 2003 (lot 205) and 5 June 2001 (lot 102), respectively.

Charles Webster was the nephew of Samuel Clemens, and his uncle established him as a publisher in order to maintain better control over the production and distribution of his own writings. The firm's greatest triumph, however, came with the publication of Grant's eloquent autobiography. Clemens claimed to have discussed this enterprise with Grant as early as 1881. But Grant did not accede until 1884, when he was impoverished and beset by early signs of throat cancer. The former president worked intensely and completed his final revisions just days before his death, 23 July 1885. Clemens offered Grant extraordinarily generous terms—75% of all profits—and when the Personal Memoirs became one of the best-selling books of the nineteenth century, Webster & Company eventually paid Grant's widow royalties of nearly $450,000.

Although sales of the Memoirs eventually reached 350,000 copies, Clemens—perhaps sensitive to false rumors that he had ghostwritten the book for Grant—evidently signed very few. The present set, dated 1 December 1985 by Clemens in the first volume, must have been among the first off the presses.