Life on the Mississippi was written by Twain as a sort of autobiographical account of his time spent on the Mississippi River. It contains a vast amount of information about the area as well as a number of illustrations to give the reader an actual idea of what the area looked like at the time of publication. In fact, the book contains over 310 illustrations crafted by 3 different artists. The book is well-known for the works of art it contains and that, to me, is one of the most interesting aspects in the overall beauty of the book. The illustrators responsbile for the works in this book were A.B. Shute, Edmund Henry Garrett, and John Harley.

In the early 1880′s, Twain founded the Kaolatype Co. which centered on a new process for printing illustrations. This method used a matrix of fine clay to transer the illustrations to printable images as a way of shortcut and cost savings. Twain thought that Kaolotype would replace conventional steel and wood engraving methods in the late 1870′s. Twain insisted that Life on the Mississippi be printed with its illustrations done in kaolatype. However, the illustrators hired by Osgood (the publisher) that were to provide their works in the book refused to have their art printed in kaolatype. Technological innovations continuted and the kaolotype method was overlooked very quickly for more successful and effective methods. The most effective would have been wood engraved, steel engraved, and line drawings. I can’t say for sure, but I found a book website that sells this book, and they stated that most of the illustrations were line drawings. Either way, I never knew there was such a rich history behind the illustrated works in this book. I found it very fun to learn about.

http://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/twainlife/illustr.html

http://www.victorianweb.org/art/illustration/tech1.html

http://books.google.com/books?id=Zwb2PHNBJa4C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

 He published Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper and signed a contract with Twain to publish a book that would expand on the articles previously written in the magazine. The book was to be titled Life on the Mississippi and was published in 1883. Andrew Varick Stout Anthony was the book design director and hired artists to illustrate the novel. Edmund Henry Garrett, John Harley, and Augustus B. Shute illustrated over 300 pieces of work for the book.

While the book was published in America by Osgood and Co., it was published in the U.K  by Chatto and Windus in 1883, also. The first edition of the book contained an illustration of Twain’s flaming head and was later removed at the insistence of his wife and does not appear in any of the other printed versions. Also, in the first printed edition, the caption on one of the illustrations reads “The St. Louis Hotel” and was later changed to “The St. Charles Hotel.”

The first published editions were purchased by subscription only. I found a source stating that Twain disagreed with this and felt the book should have been published in large quantities beforehand. Osgood, however, only wanted subscribed purchases, which ended up hurting the overall sale of the book until later years. I found one of the cover pages of the first edition for viewing, which seemed to further support this statement.

Shortly after this, Osgood’s publishing company went bankrupt and the printing rights were picked up by another company.

http://www.twainquotes.com/UniformEds/UniformEdsCh13.html

http://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/twainlife/title.html

http://www.thelitwitch.com/?p=4210

http://www.paperhall.org/info/glossary.html

This machine practically blew handmade paper out of the water. Production rates went from around 60-100 lbs to 1000 lbs a day.

http://www.casepaper.com/res_paperhistory.htm

http://www.trussel.com/books/lucas09.htm

Life on the Mississippi was published in 1883 which was many years after the first machine made papers had been introduced. Therefore, it is evident that these books were printed on machine made paper. Many papers used in this time period have been known to turn a brownish color after a few years due to the high acid content of the wood pulp in the paper. In 1882, the sulfite wood pulp process was developed on a large scale, so most of the books, magazines, and newspapers were printed on this, which more than likely includes the paper used in Life on the Mississippi.

Surprisingly, there was very little progress in the art of typography and printing press from the 1600′s up to the very early 1800′s. The Industrial Revolution, thankfully, brought many innovations into the world of print making. Steam technology replaced hand operated presses and this dramatically upped the production rate. Other innovations included long, continuous rolls of paper and  the changing of material used to print from wood to iron. Linotype introduced a significant leap into the print making world by creating a movable type with a machine instead of by hand. However, Life on the Mississippi was published in 1883 and the invention of the linotype was not until later in the 1880′s.

Life on the Mississippi contains over 300 woodcut illustrations and vignettes. After countless hours of searching, I stumbled upon a photograph of one of the pages from the book. I looked at many different font types, but still feel I do not know enough on the subject in order to make an educated guess. What I have decided to do is post the picture I found and ask for anyone’s input who reads this post. Any suggestions or ideas where I could find more information would be greatly appreciated.

http://stores.homestead.com/merchantsrarebooks/-strse-1042/MARK-TWAIN-leather-FIRST/Detail.bok

http://www.woodsidepress.com/LINOTYPE.HTML

http://www.thelitwitch.com/?p=4210

This book was published in the both the United States and Great Britain in 1883. Twain based this book upon his years piloting on the Mississippi. It is written in two parts: stories from his first years of being a river boat captain and the second part contains observations he made when making a return trip down the Mississippi some years later. One fun note about this book is that in the US first edition there is an illustration of Mark Twain’s head on fire in an urn but it was removed at the request of his wife due to her dislike of the picture; therefore, no other first editions contained the illustration after this.

This book contains over 300 illustrations that I found very interesting to look at.

I found the cover of this book to be very eye catching and I cannot wait to learn everything I can about what went into making this book beautiful.

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