TWAIN, MARK. [CLEMENS, S. L. ] — Report from Paradise

New York, NY: Harper & Brothers, 1952. 1st Edition; 1st Printing. Hardcover. Illustrated by Charles Locke. B&W Illustrations; This book is in Very Good+ condition and has a Good only dust jacket. The book is in mostly clean, bright condition. There is some very beginning bumping to the spine ends of the book covers. The text pages are clean and bright. The front pastedown and front endpaper both have a previous owner's ink stamped name and address. The dust jacket has numerous edge tears, nicks and chips missing, along with generalized toning and spots of ground-in dirt. "For forty years Mark Twain played with the idea of writing an account of heaven which would debunk the oriental imagery of revelations. Because in his youth the devout had still taken that imagery literally, he clung, in a notable lapse from humor, to the conviction that his commentary was shocking. Even in 1909, when he finally printed, as "Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven," a fragment of his fragmentary manuscript, he expected it to shock people. The ensuing calm must have disappointed him. In the present volume the late Dixon Wecter has added to that earlier fragment the only other chapters surviving in anything like final form, with, as a coda, a letter from the Recording Angel to Olivia Clemens' uncle, Andrew Langdon of Buffalo. As Wecter notes, the humorist was "constitutionally unable to burn anything he wrote," and the vast midden heap of the Mark Twain Papers will doubtless continue to yield printable items such as this." (from The New York Times, September 7, 1952 Book Review). Very Good+ in Good dust jacket .