Description:

Clemens Samuel 1835 - 1910

Samuel Clemens check signed one year before publication of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", PSA/DNA slabbed.

PSA/DNA slabbed check graded EX - MT 6 inscribed overall and signed by Samuel Clemens (1835-1910) as "Saml. L. Clemens" in lower right corner. In near fine condition, with expected wear including minor color fading to edges and a small burn mark located in the upper right corner well outside the check field. The check measures 7.625" x 3" while the slab measures 12.5" x 5.5".

Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain endorsed this partly printed and partly handwritten pale violet check with a red quatrefoil Benjamin Franklin design at center. Check No. 182, in the amount of $140.00, was issued from the First National Bank of Hartford in Hartford, Connecticut on July 29, 1875 to be paid to the order of one W.H.H. Daggett. Right side of check is stamped with July 31, 1875 round cancellation mark. Signed by check recipient "W.H.H. Daggett" and stamped "Credit Account of W.L. Matson" verso.

Mark Twain began his fifty-year-long writing career as a Western journalist, later producing many well-beloved novels, short stories, travel accounts, and essays. When Samuel Clemens signed this check in 1875, his short story collection "Sketches New and Old" and the work "Some Learned Fables for Good Old Boys and Girls" had just been published. Twain was undoubtedly also working on his manuscript of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" at this time. The novel, set in the antebellum Midwest along the Mississippi River, would be published the following year. Twain followed up the popular and critical acclaim of Tom Sawyer with other adventure and fantasy tales, including "The Prince and the Pauper" (1881), "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" (1884), and "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" (1889).

Twain and his family settled in Hartford, Connecticut in the early 1870s, in a brick mansion adjacent to the home of fellow writer Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896). Clemens endorsed this check to "W.H.H. Daggett", one William Henry Harrison Daggett (born 1820), a Hartford, Connecticut resident of unknown profession. Daggett could have easily been a merchant, but he might have also been one of Mark Twain's business associates. Twain invested in multiple business ventures as a sideline to his lucrative writing career. Sadly, two of Twain's major investments -- the Charles L. Webster Publishing House and the Paige typesetting machine - were utterly disastrous. Twain traveled to Europe to economize on living expenses, and lectured to recoup some income.

A handsome check signed by Gilded Age author Samuel L. Clemens!

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