Description:

Clemens Samuel

Samuel Clemens Gorgeous Signed Check Signed, PSA/DNA Slabbed NM 7

PSA/DNA slabbed check, 7.75" x 3,"  graded PSA/DNA as NM 7. Signed by Samuel Clemens as “Saml. L. Clemensin lower right corner, with the entire check filled out entirely in his hand. A gorgeous pale violet check with an orange quatrefoil Benjamin Franklin design at center, written out to "Geer + Pond" in the amount of  "$27.72." written as "Twenty-seven 72/100," although left undated (other than the word "July"), the cancellation stamp indicates a date of July 14, 1875." Endorsed by check recipient “Geer + Pond” on 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). 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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