TWAIN (Mark). [Samuel L. Clemens].
Les Aventures de Huck Finn: L'ami de Tom Sawyer. Traduit avec l'autorisation de l'auteur par William-L. Hughes. Illustrations par Achille Sirouy.
Lovely copy of the first French edition
The first French translation of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, copiously illustrated by Achille Sirouy, a lovely copy in the original cloth.
“Remarkable craftsmanship went into the creation of Les Aventures de Huck Finn, l’ami de Tom Sawyer (1886), making it a beautiful book … The embossed and colorful cover, adorned with a remarkably dynamic representation of the novel’s main characters reminiscent of the nascent art of the comic strip, the gilt-edged pages, and the outstanding quality of the paper and binding, all make the first French translation stand out as a luxurious artifact whose textual content mattered less than its outward appearance.” (Ronald Jenn, Veronique Channaut, ‘Translations of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in France (1886–2015)’ in Journal of Transnational American Studies 12.2 (2021), p.49).
William Little Hughes’ translation is rather a sanitised affair, being aimed more squarely at school children than Twain’s original.
Preliminaries rather foxed, cloth lightly marked and age-toned, still a nice, bright copy.
