Fantastic partial autograph manuscript, signed "Mark Twain," five pages, 5.5 x 8.5, dated 1884 on the handwritten title page. The first five pages of Clemens's manuscript draft for '1,002nd Arabian Night', a short story that went unpublished until after his death, with a handwritten cover sheet using a working title: "Title-Page. 1,002: An Oriental Tale. 'Henceforth did King Shahriyar make it his regular custom to take a new wife every day, & slay her the next morning. This he continued to do during a period of three years.'—The One Thousand & One Nights, Lane's Translation. By Mark Twain, 1884, All rights reserved." He then launches into the tale of the King's new wife, Scheherazade, primarily consisting of dialogue between her and King Shahriyar. At the bottom of one page, Clemens adds a note to the "compositor," initialed "M.T.," in full: "The figures inserted thus, (1) (2) (3), &c., refer to corresponding numbers on the illustrations. Leave them out, of course." In overall very good to fine condition, with some nicks and chipping to edges, and a few small tape repairs to corners.
The remaining portion of the manuscript is preserved in the Mark Twain Papers at the University of California, Berkeley. Twain later wrote to his nephew, who was to publish the book, that it ought to be published anonymously. It would not appear in print until the publication of Mark Twain's Satires & Burlesques by the University of California Press, edited by Franklin R. Rogers. In his introduction, Rogers reveals why Twain may have experienced a change of heart. Quoting Twain's friend W. D. Howells on 1,002nd: 'The opening passages are the funniest you have ever done; but when I got into the story itself, it seemed to me that I was made a fellow sufferer with the Sultan from Scheherazade's prolixity…I feel bound to say that I think this burlesque falls short of being amusing.'
Nevertheless, '1,002nd Arabian Night' certainly remains of great interest because of its closeness to Huckleberry Finn in the Twain canon—both were completed in Elmira, New York, in the summer of 1883.
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