Estate / Collection: Property from the Estate of Sara Roosevelt Wilford

[ROOSEVELT, FRANKLIN D.]
TWAIN, MARK [=CLEMENS, SAMUEL L.] A True Story, and the Recent Carnival of Crime. Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1877. First book edition, first state cloth binding with the Osgood device, signed Franklin D. Roosevelt/Hyde Park on the inside front cover i.e. the front paste-down (which is the ad-leaf for the "Vest-Pocket Series"). Green publisher's cloth printed in black and lettered in gilt. 4 3/4 x 3 1/8 inches (12 x 8 cm); 92 pp., [4] pp. ads at rear; four full-page illustrations. Very light wear, cloth a trifle dulled on the front cover. With the "Library of Franklin D. Roosevelt" book label, numbered in ink 1158 (in his hand?).

Written in dialect, the first story here appeared in The Atlantic in 1874, and also appeared in Twain's Sketches New and Old in 1875. It is based on the experiences of Mary Ann Cord (named "Aunt Rachel" in this story), the cook at Clemens' sister-in-law's farm in Elmira, New York. Ostensibly humorous, but in fact harrowing, it recounts the separation of her family at a slave auction, cooking for a regiment of Union soldiers during the Civil War, and her reunion with her youngest son, a one-time fugitive slave. The second story is a humorous squib about Twain being visited by his own conscience in the form of a dwarf. BAL 3373.