Mark Twain's Scrap Book
New York: Daniel Slote and Co., 1878. Very Good-. Item #25173
New York: Daniel Slote & Co., ca. 1878. Octavo; publisher's cloth over marbled paper-covered boards; [30] gum-lined leaves of grey stock. Boards a bit scuffed and rear cover quite sunned and faintly damp stained, one leaf separated. Contemporary ownership signature of a Mrs. E.M. McDonald to rear free endpape, textblock filled to fifty percent completion with news clippings. A Good to Very Good example overall.
Scrapbook invented and patented by Twain in 1877 and reissued numerous times through the end of the 19th century. Ownership signature of a Mrs. E.M. McDonald, though it is possible that a family member filled the notebook with clippings, as the opening entry is the announcement of the unexpected death of Mrs. Elizabeth Morton McDonald, of Berryville, VA, and Charlestown, WV.
Whoever they may be, the previous owner has filled the scrapbook with thirty-six (36) clippings for recipes and home remedies, followed by thirty-six (36) clipped poems, mostly religious, sentimental, or elegiac. The remedies are worth special attention, displaying the health concerns of the late 19th-century American. Concoctions include remedies against consumption, cholera infantum, diphtheria (whiskey), rheumatism (turpentine and camphor), croup (egg whites and sugar water), catarrh (inhaling steamed tar), corns (raw cotton), warts (muriatic acid or just leave them alone), and colic (turning the patient upside down).
Other recipes of a tastier variety include pickled pears, creamed eggs, stuffed tomatoes, and fruit jumbles. Also: clippings on removing grease from wallpaper, cleaning marble, and making cough syrup and tooth wash.
See BAL 3614 for the first (1877) appearance.
Price: $150.00