BIB_ID
280928
Accession number
MA 7270
Creator
Clemens, Samuel Langhorne, 1835-1910.
Display Date
[1893].
Credit line
Purchased on the Fellows Endowment Fund, 2008.
Description
1 item (57 p.) ; 20.4 cm
Notes
Formerly housed in a green morocco gilt chemise and red morocco gilt slipcase by the Adams Bindery (retained).
Signed "Mark Twain" at the end of the manuscript.
The phrase "6500? words" is written in Clemens's hand at the head of the first page of the manuscript, with the spelling "Esquimaux" in the title.
Written in ink on rectos only and heavily revised throughout; paginated by Clemens.
Signed "Mark Twain" at the end of the manuscript.
The phrase "6500? words" is written in Clemens's hand at the head of the first page of the manuscript, with the spelling "Esquimaux" in the title.
Written in ink on rectos only and heavily revised throughout; paginated by Clemens.
Provenance
Sale (Christie's, New York, 9 December 1998, lot 15); William K. Steiner sale (Sotheby's, New York, 11 December 2008, lot 48).
Summary
Clemens wrote this story in 1893 using his pseudonym, "Mark Twain," as the narrator. Clemens writes of spending a week in a village in the Arctic Circle (a region he never visited) with a 20-year-old Eskimo girl named Lasca. The central narrative is Lasca's account of her tragic romance with a young man named Kalula. Clemens was fascinated by wealth and its consequences. The story satirizes the distorting effects of great wealth on character and behavior, and the inverted notions of wealth that exist between Lasca (and her tribe) and industrialized societies. Clemens concludes the story: "So ended the poor maid's humble little tale -- whereby we learn that since a hundred million dollars in New York and twenty-two fish-hooks on the border of the Arctic Circle represent the same financial supremacy, a man in straightened circumstances is a fool to stay in New York when he can buy ten cents' worth of fish-hooks and emigrate."
Catalog link
Department